Unravelling the genomic landscape of Canadian <i>Borrelia burgdorferi</i>: a comparison across global strains.

ABSTRACT: The main agent of Lyme borreliosis (LB) in North America, the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi, is spreading in Canada following the northward expansion of its primary tick vectors, Ixodes scapularis and Ixodes pacificus. Despite the importance of this pathogen for human health, the precise geographical origin and genome structure of Canadian B. burgdorferi strains remain to be determined, and no complete genome sequence from this region is available. The complex genome structure of Borrelia species makes their assembly challenging, but the latest long-read sequencing technologies and bioinformatics software now enable de novo assembly of Borrelia genomes with high efficacy. In this study, we sequenced and assembled the genomes of six Canadian

SUBMITTER: Piot A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12813429 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature