CATTLE ticks must suck blood to make up for a missing enzyme, say researchers
in Brazil.
All animals were thought to make their own haem, an essential part of
oxygen-carrying proteins such as haemoglobin. But Gloria Braz and her colleagues
at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro found that cattle ticks,
Boophilus microplus, lack a key enzyme needed for haem synthesis (
Current Biology, vol 9, p 703). Instead, the insects get all the haem they
need from their victims’ blood.
