The cattle tick Rhipicephalus microplus has a large impact on cattle production due to its bloodsucking habit and transmission of pathogens that cause babesiosis and anaplasmosis. Application of acaricides constitutes the major control method but is often accompanied by serious drawbacks, including environmental contamination and an increase in acaricide resistance by ticks. The recent development of anti-tick vaccines has provided positive results in the post-genomic era, owing to the rise of reverse vaccinological and bioinformatics approaches to analyze and identify candidate protective antigens for use against ticks. The ATAQ protein is considered a novel antigen for the control of the cattle tick R. microplus; it is expressed in midguts and Malpighian tubules of all ticks from the Rhipicephalus genus. However, genetic diversity studies are required. Here, the ATAQ gene was sequenced of seven R. microplus tick isolates from different regions in Mexico to understand the genetic diversity. The results showed that sequence identity among the Mexican isolates ranged between 98 and 100% and 97.8–100% at the nucleotide and protein levels, respectively. Alignments of deduced amino acid sequences from different R. microplus ATAQ isolates in Mexico revealed a high degree of conservation. However, the Mexican isolates differed from the R. microplus “Mozambique” strain, at 20 amino acid residues. Finally, the analysis of more R. microplus isolates, and possibly of other Rhipicephalus species, to determine the genetic diversity in the ATAQ locus is essential to suggest this antigen as a vaccine candidate that might control tick infestations.

牛蜱Rhipicephalus microplus由于其吸血习惯和传播导致巴贝虫病和无形体病的病原体，对牛的生产有很大影响。杀螨剂的应用是主要的控制方法，但往往伴随着严重的缺点，包括环境污染和蜱对杀螨剂的抗性增加。由于反向疫苗学和生物信息学方法的兴起，用于分析和鉴定用于对抗蜱的候选保护性抗原，抗蜱疫苗的最新发展在后基因组时代提供了积极成果。ATAQ 蛋白被认为是控制牛蜱R. microplus的新抗原; 它在Rhipicephalus属的所有蜱的中肠和 Malpighian 小管中表达。然而，需要进行遗传多样性研究。在这里，对来自墨西哥不同地区的七个R. microplus蜱分离株的ATAQ基因进行了测序，以了解遗传多样性。结果表明，墨西哥分离株之间的序列同一性在核苷酸和蛋白质水平上分别介于 98% 和 100% 之间和 97.8% 到 100% 之间。墨西哥不同R. microplus ATAQ 分离株推导的氨基酸序列的比对显示高度保守。然而，墨西哥分离株与R. microplus不同“莫桑比克”菌株，20 个氨基酸残基。最后，分析更多的R. microplus分离株，可能还有其他Rhipicephalus物种，以确定ATAQ基因座的遗传多样性，对于建议该抗原作为可能控制蜱虫感染的候选疫苗至关重要。