A specific outer-surface protein found in the bacterium that causes tick-borne Lyme disease is essential to survival of the bacterium in its natural life cycle and colonization in the insect, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have found.

Scientists have developed a new system that uses basic information about the ecology of "vector" borne diseases - malaria, Lyme disease or some of the new emerging diseases such as Avian flu – to mathematically predict how they might change, spread and pose new risks to human health.