The genome of Borrelia recurrentis, the agent of deadly louse-borne relapsing fever, is a degraded subset of tick-borne Borrelia duttonii.

ABSTRACT: In an effort to understand how a tick-borne pathogen adapts to the body louse, we sequenced and compared the genomes of the recurrent fever agents Borrelia recurrentis and B. duttonii. The 1,242,163-1,574,910-bp fragmented genomes of B. recurrentis and B. duttonii contain a unique 23-kb linear plasmid. This linear plasmid exhibits a large polyT track within the promoter region of an intact variable large protein gene and a telomere resolvase that is unique to Borrelia. The genome content is characterized by several repeat families, including antigenic lipoproteins. B. recurrentis exhibited a 20.4% genome size reduction and appeared to be a strain of B. duttonii, with a decaying genome, possibly due to the accumulation of genomic errors induced by the loss of recA and mutS. Accompanying thi

SUBMITTER: Lescot M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2525819 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature