Grace Glasser | 2025 I.S. Symposium

Name: Grace Glasser
Title: How similar are we to man’s best friend? Investigating Genetic Predispositions to Symptomatic Lyme disease in Canis Familiaris
Major: Biology
Minor: Spanish
Advisors: Laura Sirot; Rick Lehtinen

Lyme disease is widespread in the United States affecting tens of thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of dogs each year. In this study, I investigated the relationship between sex, breed, age, and the time of year each dog was tested. In previous studies sex, age, breed, and time of year have been shown to have varying relationships with positive cases of Lyme in dogs. I found that none of these factors have a significant relationship with positive cases of Lyme in the data I collected. Additionally, this project focused on a genetic variant, I602S, which in humans and hamster cells was found to mute the response to triacylated proteins, like those in B. burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. None of the 32 dogs sampled in this study were found to have the I602S variant, perhaps indicating that the Isoleucine amino acid in that location is conserved in dogs for a reason. This study also included interviews with the owners of the 32 dogs who were sampled to investigate the dogs’ outdoor activity, typical outdoor habitat, and tick prevention used. The relationship between tick prevention and symptomatic cases was not found to be significant, but 76% of asymptomatic dogs used consistent tick prevention. The relationship between the use of tick prevention and symptomatic cases may be worth investigating further.

Posted in Symposium 2025 on May 1, 2025.