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To find out why, scientists gave the ticks clean blood extracted from Borrelia burgdorferi. As a consequence, even though the pathogen was no longer present in the infected blood, the tick's JAK/STAT pathway was engaged, suggesting that some imprints in the blood left by Spirochaete burgdorferi was the true source of the JAK/STAT activation.

The imprints are the cytokine interferon γ (IFN-γ). Further studies revealed that Dome1 proteins in the tick digestive system act as receptors for JAK/STAT and that these proteins are able to bind to IFN-γ produced by the mammalian immune system, thus initiating the JAK/STAT pathway.