BACKGROUND For clinical development of a novel multivalent OspA vaccine against Lyme borreliosis, serological assays are required which can be used to establish immune correlates of protection against infection with Borrelia. METHODS Four assays (an OspA IgG ELISA, a competitive inhibition (CI) ELISA, a Borrelia surface-binding (SB) assay and a Borrelia killing assay) were used to evaluate th...

Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), the cause of Lyme disease, has appeared not to evoke a detectable specific antibody response in humans until long after infection. This delayed response has been a biologic puzzle and has hampered early diagnosis. Antibody to the abundant organism-specific outer surface proteins, such as the 31-kD OspA, has rarely been detected less than 6 mo after infection. Antibody...

OspA is a protective antigen of the Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. Expression of the full-length B. burgdorferi B31 OspA gene in Escherichia coli produces a protein that is processed posttranslationally by signal peptidase II and contains an attached lipid moiety. The recombinant OspA lipoprotein has been purified by detergent extraction and ion-exchange chromatography. Priming a...

We tested the hypothesis that cross-reactivity between the outer surface protein A (OspA) of Borellia burgdorferi and human leukocyte function antigen (LFA) type 1 mediates chronic autoimmune sequelae of Lyme disease. T cell response was studied in subjects with Lyme disease presenting with erythema migrans alone (n=36), erythema migrans with neurological disease (n=12), and chronic Lyme diseas...

The outer membrane of Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme disease agent, contains lipoproteins anchored by their lipid moieties and integral proteins with membrane-spanning regions. We used the techniques of in situ proteolysis, immunofluorescence, in vitro growth inhibition, and cross-linking with formaldehyde to characterize topological relationships between P66, an integral membrane protein, and ...

The molecular basis of how Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), the Lyme disease spirochete, maintains itself in nature via a complex life cycle in ticks and mammals is poorly understood. Outer surface (lipo)protein A (OspA) of Bb has been the most intensively studied of all borrelial molecular constituents, and hence, much has been speculated about the potential role(s) of OspA in the life cycle of Bb. ...

The Lyme disease spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi alters the expression of outer surface protein (osp) genes as the bacterium cycles between ticks and mammals. OspA is produced as borreliae enter the tick vector and remains a major surface antigen during midgut colonization. To elucidate the role of OspA in the vector, we created an insertional deletion of ospA in strain B31-A3. The ospA mutant ...

Vaccination with recombinant outer surface protein A (OspA) has been shown to protect mice from infection with Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme disease agent. To determine whether antibodies to B. burgdorferi proteins other than OspA are involved in protective immunity, antibodies to OspA were removed from protective anti-B. burgdorferi serum; the residual serum was still protective. Absorption o...

In Europe, Borrelia garinii OspA serotype 4 has been isolated from the cerebrospinal fluid of patients but, up to now, has never been identified among culture isolates from Ixodes ricinus ticks. This information raises the question of whether OspA serotype 4 is transmitted by I. ricinus in nature. In the present study, I. ricinus nymphs collected in an area of endemicity in southern Germany wer...

No effective recombinant vaccines are currently available for any rickettsial diseases. In this regard the first non-ribosomal DNA sequences from the obligate intracellular pathogen Piscirickettsia salmonis are presented. Genomic DNA isolated from Percoll density gradient purified P. salmonis, was used to construct an expression library in lambda ZAP II. In the absence of preexisting DNA sequen...