Borrelia burgdorferi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Borrelia burgdorferi
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Bacteria
Phylum: Spirochaetes
Class: Spirochaetes
Order: Spirochaetales
Genus: Borrelia
Species: B. burgdorferi
Binomial name
Borrelia burgdorferi
Main article: Lyme disease microbiology

Borrelia burgdorferi is species of bacteria of the spirochete class of the genus Borrelia. B. burgdorferi is predominant in North America, but also exists in Europe, and is the agent of Lyme disease.

It is a zoonotic, vector-borne disease transmitted by ticks and is named after the researcher Willy Burgdorfer who first isolated the bacterium in 1982. B. burgdorferi is one of the few pathogenic bacteria that can survive without iron, having replaced all of its iron-sulfur cluster enzymes with enzymes that use manganese, thus avoiding the problem many pathogenic bacteria face in acquiring iron.

B. burgdorferi infections have been linked to non-Hodgkin lymphomas.[1]

B. burgdorferi (B31 strain) was the third microbial genome ever sequenced, following the sequencing of both H.influenzae and M.genitalium in 1995, and contains 910,725 base pairs and 853 genes.[2] The sequencing method used was whole genome shotgun. The sequencing project, completed and published in Nature in 1997, was conducted at The Institute for Genomic Research.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Guidoboni M, Ferreri AJ, Ponzoni M, Doglioni C, Dolcetti R (2006). "Infectious agents in mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue-type lymphomas: pathogenic role and therapeutic perspectives". Clinical lymphoma & myeloma 6 (4): 289–300. PMID 16507206. 
  2. ^ "Genomic sequence of a Lyme disease spirochaete, Borrelia burgdorferi" (1997). Nature 190 (6660): 580–586. doi:10.1038/37551. 

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


 This bacteria-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.