Adaptation of a luciferase gene reporter and lac expression system to Borrelia burgdorferi.

ABSTRACT: The development of new genetic systems for studying the complex regulatory events that occur within Borrelia burgdorferi is an important goal of contemporary Lyme disease research. Although recent advancements have been made in the genetic manipulation of B. burgdorferi, there still remains a paucity of basic molecular systems for assessing differential gene expression in this pathogen. Herein, we describe the adaptation of two powerful genetic tools for use in B. burgdorferi. The first is a Photinus pyralis firefly luciferase gene reporter that was codon optimized to enhance translation in B. burgdorferi. Using this modified reporter, we demonstrated an increase in luciferase expression when B. burgdorferi transformed with a shuttle vector encoding the outer surface protein C (OspC) promo

SUBMITTER: Blevins JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1828772 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature