{{short description|British virologist and acarologist}} '''Patricia (Pat) Anne Nuttall''', OBE (born 1953)<ref name=CV>{{citation |title=Curriculum Vitae |url=http://www.epidemvac.ru/en/redaction |publisher=OOO "Antorium" |work=Epidemiology and Vaccinal Prevention website |access-date=16 March 2015 }}</ref> is a British virologist and acarologist known for her research on tick-borne diseases. Her discoveries include the fact that pathogens can be transmitted between vectors feeding on a host without being detectable in the host's blood. She is also a science administrator who served as the director of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (2001–11).<ref name=CEH_2011>{{citation |title=Professor Mark Bailey becomes acting Director of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology |url=http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/acting-director-ceh_2011_07.html |date=1 March 2011 |publisher=Natural Environment Research Council |work=Centre for Ecology & Hydrology website |access-date=16 March 2015 |archive-date=23 July 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140723165002/http://ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/acting-director-ceh_2011_07.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> As of 2015, she is professor of arbovirology in the Department of Zoology of the University of Oxford.<ref name=Oxford_Zool_Dept>{{citation |title=Pat Nuttall |url=http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/nuttall_p.htm |publisher=University of Oxford |work=Department of Zoology website |access-date=16 March 2015}}</ref>
==Education== Nuttall gained a BSc in microbiology at the University of Bristol in 1974. Her PhD in virology (1978), under the supervision of Jim Stott and C. Kaplan, was at the Institute for Animal Health (now the Pirbright Institute) and the University of Reading.<ref name=CV /><ref name=interview>{{citation|title=An interview with Patricia Nuttall, Ph.D. |year=2003 |journal=Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases |volume=3 |issue=4 |pages=249–53 |doi=10.1089/153036603322662228|pmid=14733676 |last1=Nuttall |first1=P. }}</ref>
==Career== From 1977, Nuttall did post-doctoral research at the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology of the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford and the NERC Unit of Invertebrate Virology in Oxford.<ref name=CV /><ref name=interview /> She remained at the NERC unit, which was renamed the Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology (IVEM), rising to be its director in 1996.<ref name=CV /><ref name=interview /> In 2001, IVEM merged with other bodies to become the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, and Nuttall served as the centre's director until 2011.<ref name=CEH_2011 /> During this period she oversaw the major restructuring of the centre.<ref name=interview /><ref>{{citation|title=Research Council Institutes: Fourth Report of Session 2006–07, Vol. 2: Oral and Written Evidence |author=House of Commons: Science and Technology Committee |publisher=The Stationery Office |pages=Ev47–49 }}</ref> She subsequently directed national projects with NERC.<ref name=CV /><ref name=CEH_2011 /> She chaired the Partnership for European Environmental Research from 2008 to 2010.<ref name=CV /><ref>{{citation|title=METIER Final Conference: Schedule and Lecturers |url=http://www.peer.eu/projects/metier_training_courses/metier_final_conference/schedule_and_lecturers/print.html?filename=peer.pdf |publisher=Partnership for European Environmental Research |work=Website |access-date=18 March 2015 }}</ref>
Nuttall has been professor of arbovirology in the Department of Zoology of the University of Oxford since 2013.<ref name=CV /><ref name=Oxford_Zool_Dept /> She is a fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford.<ref>{{citation|title=Prof Patricia Nuttall |url=https://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/content/1194-prof-patricia-nuttall |publisher=Wolfson College, Oxford |work=website |access-date=16 March 2015 }}</ref>
==Research== [[File:Tick-borne encephalitis virus (crop).png|thumb|right|Electron micrograph of tick-borne encephalitis virus]] Her early research was on the cattle disease, bovine viral diarrhoea. Nuttall found that the bovine viral diarrhoea virus was often present as a contaminant in foetal bovine serum, a commonly used laboratory reagent, a result that was published in ''Nature'' in 1977.<ref name=interview /><ref>{{citation|vauthors=Nuttall PA, Luther PD, Stott EJ |title=Viral contamination of bovine foetal serum and cell cultures |year=1977 |journal=Nature |volume=266 |issue=5605 |pages=835–37 |doi=10.1038/266835a0|pmid=194159 |bibcode=1977Natur.266..835N |s2cid=4269062 }}</ref> She then worked with ornithologist Chris Perrins trying to identify the virus responsible for puffinosis, a disease that affects the Manx shearwater (''Puffinus puffinus'') sea bird.<ref name=interview /><ref>{{citation|author=Brooke M |title=The Manx Shearwater |publisher=A & C Black |year=2010 |pages=8, 161 }}</ref> During this research, Nuttall visited sea-bird colonies and became interested in ticks, arthropods that often infest sea birds as well as other vertebrates, and can act as vectors for disease.<ref name=interview />
===Nonsystemic transmission=== In the early 1980s, Nuttall started to study viruses transmitted by ticks, initially focusing on orbiviruses, nairoviruses and thogotoviruses.<ref name=CV /> While performing experiments designed to explore whether ''Thogoto virus'', an influenza-like virus, can be transmitted between ticks during mating, Nuttall and her colleagues unexpectedly found that control ticks became infected.<ref name=interview /> They discovered that the virus can be transmitted between infected and uninfected ticks when they feed simultaneously on apparently uninfected guinea pigs, without the virus being present at a detectable level in the blood.<ref name=Jones_1987>{{citation|vauthors=Jones LD, Davies CR, Steele GM, Nuttall PA |title=A novel mode of arbovirus transmission involving a nonviremic host |year=1987 |journal=Science |volume=237 |issue=4816 |pages=775–77 |doi=10.1126/science.3616608 |jstor=1699212 |pmid=3616608|bibcode=1987Sci...237..775J }}</ref><ref name=Higgs /><ref name=Randolph /> With Milan Labuda, Nuttall subsequently demonstrated the same phenomenon with tick-borne encephalitis virus, a better-understood arthropod-transmitted virus.<ref name=Labuda_1993>{{citation|vauthors=Labuda M, Jones LD, Williams T, Danielova V, Nuttall PA |title=Efficient transmission of tick-borne encephalitis virus between cofeeding ticks |year=1993 |journal=Journal of Medical Entomology |volume=30 |pages=295–99 |doi=10.1093/jmedent/30.1.295|pmid=8433342 }}</ref>
These results challenge the then-accepted idea that arthropod-transmitted viruses can only be transmitted when the arthropod vector feeds on an infected host in which the virus is replicating and circulating in the blood above a threshold level.<ref name=interview /><ref name=Higgs /><ref name=Randolph /><ref name=Lord /> Sarah Randolph comments: {{quotation|Suddenly the conventional wisdom that systemic infections above a certain threshold level were necessary for transmission, and could therefore be used to assay host competence, was over-turned. Viraemia and even bacteraemia are now seen as an inconsistent, species-specific consequence of infection but not a necessary condition for transmission.<ref name=Randolph />}}
The phenomenon of nonviraemic or nonsystemic transmission turns out to be widespread – it has been subsequently observed with many other viruses transmitted by ticks, black flies and mosquitos, including major human pathogens such as West Nile virus, as well as other pathogens, including the spirochaete ''Borrelia burgdorferi'', which causes Lyme disease.<ref name=Higgs>{{citation|vauthors=Higgs S, Schneider BS, Vanlandingham DL, Klingler KA, Gould EA |title=Nonviremic transmission of West Nile virus |year=2005 |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |volume=102 |issue=25 |pages=8871–74 |doi=10.1073/pnas.0503835102|pmc=1157059 |pmid=15951417|bibcode=2005PNAS..102.8871H |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name=Kuno>{{citation|vauthors=Kuno G, Chang GJ |title=Biological transmission of arboviruses: Reexamination of and new insights into components, mechanisms, and unique traits as well as their evolutionary trends |year=2005 |journal=Clinical Microbiology Reviews |volume=18 |issue=4 |pages=608–37 |doi=10.1128/cmr.18.4.608-637.2005 |pmid=16223950 |pmc=1265912}}</ref><ref>{{citation|author=Patrican LA |title=Acquisition of Lyme disease spirochetes by cofeeding ''Ixodes scapularis'' ticks |year=1997 |journal=American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene |volume=57 |issue=5 |pages=589–93 |doi=10.4269/ajtmh.1997.57.589 |pmid=9392600 }}</ref> – and important in natural transmission.<ref name=Lord>{{citation|vauthors=Lord CC, Tabachnick WJ |title=Influence of nonsystemic transmission on the epidemiology of insect borne arboviruses: A case study of vesicular stomatitis epidemiology in the Western United States |year=2002 |journal=Journal of Medical Entomology |volume=39 |issue=3 |pages= 417–26 |doi=10.1603/0022-2585-39.3.417|pmid=12061433 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Nuttall's group has continued to study the phenomenon, and have shown that immunity to tick-borne encephalitis virus does not prevent nonsystemic transmission.<ref name=Labuba_1997>{{citation|vauthors=Labuda M, Kozuch O, Zuffová E, Elecková E, Hails RS, Nuttall PA |title=Tick-borne encephalitis virus transmission between ticks cofeeding on specific immune natural rodent hosts |year= 1997 |journal=Virology |volume=235 |issue=1 |pages=138–43 |doi=10.1006/viro.1997.8622 |pmid=9300045|doi-access=free }}</ref>
===Tick saliva=== right|thumb|The tropical bont tick, whose saliva is the source of variegin Nuttall's recent work has focused on discovering the function of tick saliva's many constituents, as well as the mechanisms by which tick-transmitted pathogens use them to enhance their transmission.<ref name=Oxford_Zool_Dept /> Nuttall and colleagues were the first to show, in 1989, that tick saliva promotes the transmission of viruses, a phenomenon which they have called "saliva-assisted transmission"; this has been suggested as a mechanism for nonsystemic transmission.<ref name=interview /><ref name=Randolph /><ref>{{citation|vauthors=Jones LD, Hodgson E, Nuttall PA |title=Enhancement of virus transmission by tick salivary glands |url=http://vir.sgmjournals.org/content/70/7/1895.full.pdf+html |year=1989 |journal=Journal of General Virology |volume=70 |issue=7 |pages=1895–98 |doi=10.1099/0022-1317-70-7-1895|pmid=2544668 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{citation|editor1=Sonenshine DE |editor2= Roe RM |title=Biology of Ticks, Volume 2 |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2013 }}</ref> In 1998, she and her colleagues characterised three immunoglobulin-binding proteins, which were among the first proteins from tick saliva to be sequenced.<ref name=Randolph>{{citation|author=Randolph SE |title=Tick-borne disease systems emerge from the shadows: the beauty lies in molecular detail, the message in epidemiology |year=2009 |journal=Parasitology |volume=136 |issue=12 |pages=1403–13 |doi=10.1017/s0031182009005782|pmid=19366480 |s2cid=22845163 }}</ref><ref name=Willadsen /><ref>{{citation|vauthors=Wang H, Paesen GC, Nuttall PA, Barbour AG |title=Male ticks help their mates to feed |year=1998 |journal=Nature |volume=391 |issue=6669 |pages=753–54 | doi = 10.1038/35773|pmid=9486641 |bibcode=1998Natur.391..753W |s2cid=4398008 }}</ref> With Norbert Fuchsberger, Valeria Hajnicka and others, Nuttall has shown that tick saliva suppresses the host's antiviral immune responses, including natural killer cell activity and the induction of type I interferon and cytokines involved in inflammation.<ref name=interview /> Her group has also shown that the proteins in saliva differ between individual ticks of the same species and also change over the course of feeding.<ref name=Willadsen />
===Drugs and vaccines=== Some components of tick saliva have potential as drugs to treat a range of conditions unrelated to tick disease.<ref name=Oxford_Zool_Dept /><ref name=Macilwain /> Nuttall comments that "These molecules have been refined by millions of years of evolution. There are no toxicity problems, they work on a range of animals, they aren't fragile — and there are an awful lot of them."<ref name=Macilwain>{{citation|author=Macilwain C |title=Ticking the right boxes |year=2006 |journal=Nature |volume=439 |issue=7076 |page=533 |doi=10.1038/439533a|pmid=16452953 |bibcode=2006Natur.439..533M |s2cid=4425421 |doi-access=free }}</ref> For example, with Guido Paesen, Nuttall has characterised histamine-binding proteins that can suppress inflammation in humans by binding directly to histamine, rather than blocking its access to cell receptors, of which at least four are known.<ref name=interview /><ref name=Macilwain /><ref>{{citation|vauthors=Paesen GC, Adams PL, Harlos K, Nuttall PA, Stuart DI |title=Tick histamine-binding proteins: Isolation, cloning, and three-dimensional structure |year=1999 |journal=Molecular Cell |volume=3 |issue=5 |pages=661–71 |doi=10.1016/s1097-2765(00)80359-7|pmid=10360182 |doi-access=free }}</ref> One of these proteins, rEV131, was investigated by NERC spin-off company Evolutec for the treatment of hay fever and for use in recovery from cataract surgery.<ref name=interview /><ref name=Macilwain /> Another example is the anticoagulant variegin, discovered by Nuttall and Maria Kazimirova in the tropical bont tick (''Amblyomma variegatum''), which represents a novel class of thrombin inhibitor; it has been shown to prevent venous thrombosis in a zebrafish model.<ref>{{citation|vauthors=Koh CY, Kazimirova M, Trimnell A, Takac P, Labuda M, Nuttall PA, Kini RM |title=Variegin, a novel fast and tight binding thrombin inhibitor from the tropical bont tick |url=http://www.jbc.org/content/282/40/29101.full |year=2007 |journal=Journal of Biological Chemistry |volume=282 |issue=40 |pages=29101–13 |doi=10.1074/jbc.m705600200|pmid=17684009 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{citation|title=Drugs designed by nature could prevent heart attacks and blood clots |url=http://www.ceh.ac.uk/news/news_archive/2009_news_item_35.html |publisher=Natural Environment Research Council |work=Centre for Ecology & Hydrology website |access-date=18 March 2015 }}</ref>
Tick saliva products are also possible targets for vaccines to control tick infestation and, potentially, to prevent the diseases they carry.<ref name=Oxford_Zool_Dept /><ref name=Willadsen>{{citation|author=Willadsen P |title=Anti-tick vaccines |url=http://www.cbpv.org.br/artigos/CBPV_artigo_002.pdf |year=2004 |journal=Parasitology |volume=129 |pages=S367-87 |doi=10.1017/s0031182003004657|pmid=15938519 |s2cid=40368916 }}</ref> One vaccine candidate explored by Nuttall's group is 64TRP, a 15 kDa ''Rhipicephalus appendiculatus'' protein from the cement cone that glues the tick's mouthparts to the host. Vaccination with 64TRP can protect against tick-borne encephalitis virus carried by a different type of tick, the castor bean tick (''Ixodes ricinus''), in a mouse model.<ref name=Willadsen /><ref name=Labuda_2006>{{citation|vauthors=Labuda M, Trimnell AR, Licková M, Kazimírová M, Davies GM, Lissina O, Hails RS, Nuttall PA |title=An anti-vector vaccine protects against a lethal vector-borne pathogen |year=2006 |journal=PLOS Pathogens |volume=2 |issue=4 |page=e27 |doi=10.1371/journal.ppat.0020027|pmid=16604154 |pmc=1424664 |doi-access=free }}</ref>
==Awards== Nuttall received the Ivanovsky Medal for Virology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1996.<ref name=interview /> She was awarded the OBE in the 2000 New Year Honours List, for "services to Environmental Science and Policy."<ref>{{citation|title=New Year Honours List — United Kingdom |url=https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/55710/supplement/15 |date=31 December 1999 |journal=The London Gazette |volume=55710 |page=15 }}</ref>
==Selected publications== ===Books=== *{{citation | editor1 = Nuttall PA | editor2 = Bowman AS | title = Ticks: Biology, Disease and Control | publisher = Cambridge University Press | year = 2008 | isbn = 978-0-521-86761-0 }}
===Research papers=== *{{citation |vauthors=Labuda M, Trimnell AR, Licková M, Kazimírová M, Davies GM, Lissina O, Hails RS, Nuttall PA | year = 2006 | title = An anti-vector vaccine protects against a lethal vector-borne pathogen | doi = 10.1371/journal.ppat.0020027 | journal = PLOS Pathogens | volume = 2 | issue = 4| page = e27 | pmid = 16604154 | pmc = 1424664 | doi-access = free }} *{{citation |vauthors=Paesen GC, Adams PL, Harlos K, Nuttall PA, Stuart DI | year = 1999 | title = Tick histamine-binding proteins: Isolation, cloning, and three-dimensional structure | journal = Molecular Cell | volume = 3 | issue = 5 | pages = 661–71 | doi=10.1016/s1097-2765(00)80359-7| pmid = 10360182 | doi-access = free }} *{{citation |vauthors=Wang H, Paesen GC, Nuttall PA, Barbour AG | year = 1998 | title = Male ticks help their mates to feed | doi = 10.1038/35773 | journal = Nature | volume = 391 | issue = 6669| pages = 753–54 | pmid = 9486641 | bibcode = 1998Natur.391..753W | s2cid = 4398008 }} *{{citation |vauthors=Labuda M, Kozuch O, Zuffová E, Elecková E, Hails RS, Nuttall PA | year = 1997 | title = Tick-borne encephalitis virus transmission between ticks cofeeding on specific immune natural rodent hosts | journal = Virology | volume = 235 | issue = 1 | pages = 138–43 | doi=10.1006/viro.1997.8622 | pmid=9300045| doi-access = free }} *{{citation |vauthors=Jones LD, Hodgson E, Nuttall PA | year = 1989 | title = Enhancement of virus transmission by tick salivary glands | url = http://vir.sgmjournals.org/content/70/7/1895.full.pdf+html | journal = Journal of General Virology | volume = 70 | issue = 7| pages = 1895–98 | doi=10.1099/0022-1317-70-7-1895| pmid = 2544668 | doi-access = free }} *{{citation |vauthors=Jones LD, Davies CR, Steele GM, Nuttall PA | year = 1987 | title = A novel mode of arbovirus transmission involving a nonviremic host | journal = Science | volume = 237 | issue = 4816| pages = 775–77 | doi=10.1126/science.3616608 | pmid = 3616608| bibcode = 1987Sci...237..775J }}
==References== {{reflist|30em}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Nuttall, Pat}} Category:British virologists Category:British arachnologists Category:Fellows of Wolfson College, Oxford Category:Alumni of the University of Bristol Category:Alumni of the University of Reading Category:Natural Environment Research Council Category:Officers of the Order of the British Empire Category:1953 births Category:Living people