Lyme disease Borrelia are invasive, nontoxigenic, persistent pathogens, and little is known about their mechanisms of pathogenesis. In our laboratory, a signature-tagged mutagenesis (STM) library of over 4,000 Borrelia burgdorferi transposon mutants has been constructed and is being screened for infectivity in mice. In this manner, a global view of the virulence determinants (factors required f...

Lyme Disease caused by infection with Borrelia burgdorferi is an emerging infectious disease and already by far the most common vector-borne disease in the U.S. Similar to many other infections, infection with B. burgdorferi results in strong antibody response induction, which can be used clinically as a diagnostic measure of prior exposure. However, clinical studies have shown a sometimes-prec...

Missouri patients who fulfill the strict CDC surveillance definition for Lyme disease have been reported in significant numbers since 1987, although there are no viable Missouri human cultures of Borrelia burgdorferi. The Missouri erythema migrans rashes are indistinguishable from those in other areas, and the clinical syndrome appears similar to Lyme disease nationally. The authors suspect aty...

Causative agents of Lyme disease and relapsing fever, including Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia hermsii, respectively, are unusual among bacteria in that they possess a segmented genome with linear DNA molecules terminated by hairpin ends, known as telomeres. During replication, these telomeres are processed by the essential telomere resolvase, ResT, in a unique biochemical reaction known as ...

The antibody responses to the three genomic groups of Borrelia burgdorferi (B. burgdorferi sensu stricto, Borrelia garinii, and Borrelia afzelii) were determined in 97 German patients with various manifestations of Lyme borreliosis. The geometric mean antibody titers in each patient group, determined by ELISA, were similar with each antigen preparation. By Western blotting, however, patients wi...

The mosquitoes were caught within the period of their highest activity, i.e. June August 2001, in recreational areas of the city of Szczecin. Spirochetes, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato were detected in mosquitoes with the aid of the method of indirect immunofluorescence (IFA) using rabbit anti-Borrelia burgdorferi antibodies and goat anti-rabbit IgG marked with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FIT...

A model of the 66-kDa outer membrane protein (P66) of Lyme disease Borrelia spp. predicts a surface-exposed loop near the C terminus. This region contains an antigen commonly recognized by sera from Lyme disease patients. In the present study, this region of P66 and homologous proteins of other Borrelia spp. were further investigated by using monoclonal antibodies, epitope mapping of P66 of Bor...

The infection and reservoir status of red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) for Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato were studied in Switzerland. B. burgdorferi sensu lato was isolated from 15 skin samples from 4/6 dead red squirrels, victims of road traffic. Isolates were identified using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP): B. burgdorferi sensu stricto was present in 14 culture tubes contai...

In this study, we measured the phenology of Ixodes ricinus ticks and their infection with Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (sl) simultaneously along an altitudinal gradient to assess the impact of climate on the phenology of ticks and on their infection with B. burgdorferi sl. From 1999 to 2001, free-living I. ricinus ticks were collected monthly by flagging vegetation at three different altitud...