Ticks carry more zoonotic pathogens than any other known vector / Sergey Aleshin / Getty Images
Ticks are spreading globally and bringing familiar conditions such as Lyme disease with them, as well as totally new ones. Now research is revealing how to prevent and treat the diseases they carry
By Carrie Arnold | 18 June 2025
Tucked away in a ground-floor lab in Richmond, Virginia, is a bank of industrial freezers containing thousands of transparent, thumb-sized plastic tubes. Each is filled with a clear, yellowish fluid – blood serum taken from opossums, raccoons, black bears, coyotes, vultures and many other animals.
These vials, the world’s largest collection of blood serum from wildlife, are the life’s work of Virginia Commonwealth University molecular biologist Richard Marconi. Almost every sample here is infected with some kind of tick-borne pathogen – mostly the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, one of the most widespread tick-borne diseases, but others as well.