Antigenic variation is caused by long plasmid segment conversion in a hard tick-borne relapsing fever Borrelia miyamotoi.

ABSTRACT: Borrelia miyamotoi is a hard tick-borne spirochete genetically related to relapsing fever Borrelia and the etiological agent of an emerging infectious disease in humans. Like relapsing fever Borrelia, B. miyamotoi carries clusters of gene cassettes encoding variable major proteins (Vmps) on multiple linear plasmids and shows antigenic variation in mammalian hosts by switching the expression vmp gene cassette. However, it remains unknown how the switch occurs in B. miyamotoi. Here we determined the whole genome sequences of Japanese B. miyamotoi strains to identify the repertoire and arrangement of vmp gene cassettes on five linear plasmids, and based on this information, analyzed B. miyamotoi clones reisolated from experimentally infected mice. Our analyses revealed that the switch occurre

SUBMITTER: Takeuchi T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12510640 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature