American dog ticks along their expanding range edge in Ontario, Canada.

The American dog tick, Dermacentor variabilis, is a tick of public and veterinary health importance in North America. Using passive tick surveillance data, we document distribution changes for the American dog tick in Ontario, Canada, from 2010 through 2018. Dermacentor variabilis submissions from the public were geocoded and aggregated-from large to small administrative geographies-by health region, public health unit (PHU) and Forward Sortation Area (FSA).

A Computer Vision Approach to Identifying Ticks Related to Lyme Disease.

Lyme disease (caused by ) is an infectious disease transmitted to humans by a bite from infected blacklegged ticks () in eastern North America. Lyme disease can be prevented if antibiotic prophylaxis is given to a patient within 72 hours of a blacklegged tick bite. Therefore, recognizing a blacklegged tick could facilitate the management of Lyme disease.

Oxidative changes and signalling pathways are pivotal in initiating age-related changes in articular cartilage.

Objective: To use a computational approach to investigate the cellular and extracellular matrix changes that occur with age in the knee joints of mice.

Methods: Knee joints from an inbred C57/BL1/6 (ICRFa) mouse colony were harvested at 3-30 months of age. Sections were stained with H&E, Safranin-O, Picro-sirius red and antibodies to matrix metalloproteinase-13 (MMP-13), nitrotyrosine, LC-3B, Bcl-2, and cleaved type II collagen used for immunohistochemistry.

A computer simulation approach to assessing therapeutic intervention points for the prevention of cytokine-induced cartilage breakdown.

Objective: To use a novel computational approach to examine the molecular pathways involved in cartilage breakdown and to use computer simulation to test possible interventions for reducing collagen release.

Methods: We constructed a computational model of the relevant molecular pathways using the Systems Biology Markup Language, a computer-readable format of a biochemical network. The model was constructed using our experimental data showing that interleukin-1 (IL-1) and oncostatin M (OSM) act synergistically to up-regulate collagenase protein levels and activity and initiate cartilage collagen breakdown.