Fig. 1

Experimental design and characterization of allergic reactions to tick saliva and mammalian meat consumption in the zebrafish model. (A) Zebrafish were intramuscularly inoculated with Ixodes ricinus tick saliva or PBS as negative control. Wild type adult AB strain zebrafish (10 animals/group; 1:1 female to male ratio) were kept on fish feed during pre-treatment and until Day 2. Zebrafish were injected with each treatment at Days 0 and 3, and from Day 2 and until the end of the experiment at Day 8 fish were fed with dog food containing mammalian meat. After fish euthanasia, intestine tissue samples were collected and used for transcriptomics and proteomics analyses with multi-omics integration of obtained datasets. (B) Zebrafish hemorrhagic type allergic reactions, abnormal behavior patterns, abnormal or no feeding and accumulated mortality were examined from Day 1 and followed daily until the end of the experiment at Day 8. Results were compared between treatments by one-way ANOVA test with post-hoc Tukey HSD test (p ≤ 0.05; N = 6–10 biological replicates).