Reptile-associated Borrelia species in the goanna tick (Bothriocroton undatum) from Sydney, Australia.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Knowledge on the capacity of Australian ticks to carry Borrelia species is currently limited or missing. To evaluate the potential of ticks to carry bacterial pathogens and their DNA, it is imperative to have a robust workflow that maximises recovery of bacterial DNA within ticks in order to enable accurate identification. By exploiting the bilateral anatomical symmetry of ticks, we were able to directly compare two DNA extraction methods for 16S rRNA gene diversity profiling and pathogen detection. We aimed to assess which combination of DNA extraction and 16S rRNA hypervariable region enables identification of the greatest bacterial diversity, whilst minimising bias, and providing the greatest capacity for the identification of Borrelia spp.

Results

We collected

SUBMITTER: Panetta JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5738880 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature