Leptospires belong to a genus of parasitic bacterial spirochetes that have adapted to a broad range of mammalian hosts. Mechanisms of leptospiral molecular evolution were explored by sequence analysis of four genes shared by 38 strains belonging to the core group of pathogenic Leptospira species: L. interrogans, L. kirschneri, L. noguchii, L. borgpetersenii, L. santarosai, and L. weilii. The 16...

Leptospirosis is an important global veterinary health problem caused by spirochetes belonging to the genus Leptospira. Leptospires are ubiquitous in nature, and therefore able to adapt to both the ambient environment and the renal tubules of chronically infected reservoir hosts. Microscopic agglutination test (MAT) remains a specialized test, which is not generally performed in the routine dia...

Transcripts of Leptospira 16S rRNA, FlaB, LigB, LipL21, LipL32, LipL36, LipL41, and OmpL37 were quantified in the blood of susceptible (hamsters) and resistant (mice) animal models of leptospirosis. We first validated adequate reference genes and then evaluated expression patterns in vivo compared to in vitro cultures. LipL32 expression was downregulated in vivo and differentially regulated in ...

Leptospirosis is a zooanthroponosis aetiologically caused by pathogenic bacteria belonging to the genus, Leptospira. Environmental signals such as increases in temperatures or oxidative stress can trigger response regulatory modes of virulence genes during infection. This study sought to determine the effect of temperature and oxidative stress on virulence associated genes in highly passaged Le...

Leptospirosis is an emerging zoonosis caused by pathogenic spirochetes belonging to the genus Leptospira. An understanding of leptospiral protein expression regulation is needed to develop new immunoprotective and serodiagnostic strategies. We used the humoral immune response during human leptospirosis as a reporter of protein antigens expressed during infection. Qualitative and quantitative im...

Leptospirosis is a global zoonosis caused by pathogenic bacteria of the genus Leptospira. The application CRISPR/Cas9 system has facilitated generation mutants and subsequent evaluation phenotypes. Since DNA breaks induced RNA-guided Cas9 nuclease are lethal to Leptospira, different methodologies were implemented overcome this limitation. Initially, CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) was employed cr...