BBE02 disruption mutants of Borrelia burgdorferi B31 have a highly transformable, infectious phenotype.

ABSTRACT: We constructed highly transformable and infectious Borrelia burgdorferi B31 by inactivating BBE02, a putative restriction-modification gene on the linear plasmid lp25. The low-passage-number B31 clones 5A4 (containing all plasmids) and 5A18 (lp28-4(-) lp56(-)) were used for this study, and BBE02 was disrupted by homologous recombination. The transformation efficiency with the shuttle vector pBSV2C03::gntDeltakan was increased from <1 to approximately 10 colonies per mug of DNA for 5A4 and 5A4 BBE02::Kan(r) and from 14 to approximately 600 colonies per mug of DNA for 5A18 and 5A18 BBE02::Kan(r). lp25, which is required for infectivity in mice, was retained in BBE02 mutants transformed with pBSV2C03::gntDeltakan, but lp25 was not detected in transformants of the parental clones 5A4 and 5A18.

SUBMITTER: Kawabata H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC529111 | biostudies-literature | 2004 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature