Within-host competition between Borrelia afzelii ospC strains in wild hosts as revealed by massively parallel amplicon sequencing.

ABSTRACT: Infections frequently consist of more than one strain of a given pathogen. Experiments have shown that co-infecting strains often compete, so that the infection intensity of each strain in mixed infections is lower than in single strain infections. Such within-host competition can have important epidemiological and evolutionary consequences. However, the extent of competition has rarely been investigated in wild, naturally infected hosts, where there is noise in the form of varying inoculation doses, asynchronous infections and host heterogeneity, which can potentially alleviate or eliminate competition. Here, we investigated the extent of competition between Borrelia afzelii strains (as determined by ospC genotype) in three host species sampled in the wild. For this purpose, we developed

SUBMITTER: Strandh M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4528491 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature