Project description:The similarity of Lyme borreliosis to other diseases and the complex pathogenesis cause diagnostic and therapeutic difficulties. Changes at the cellular and molecular level after Borrelia sp. infection remain still poorly understood. Therefore, the present study focused on the gene expression in human dermal fibroblasts in differentiation of infection with Borrelia garinii, Borrelia afzelii and Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto spirochetes. For microarray analysis 10 samples were used: 3 control samples - K, 2 samples of NHDF cells infected with Borrelia garinii - G, 2 samples of NHDF cells infected with Borrelia afzelii - A and 3 samples of NHDF cells infected with Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto - SS.
Project description:Borrelia burgdorferi, the etiological agent of Lyme disease, persists in nature through an enzootic cycle consisting of a vertebrate host and an Ixodes tick vector. The sequence motifs modified by two well-characterized restriction/modification loci of B. burgdorferi type strain B31 were recently described, but the methylation profiles of other Lyme disease Borrelia have not been characterized. Herein, the methylomes of B. burgdorferi type strain B31 and 7 clonal derivatives, along with B. burgdorferi N40, B. burgdorferi 297, B. burgdorferi CA-11, B. afzelii PKo, B. afzelii BO23, and B. garinii PBr, were defined through PacBio SMRT sequencing. This analysis revealed 9 novel sequence motifs methylated by the plasmid-encoded restriction/modification enzymes of these Borrelia strains. Furthermore, while a previous analysis of B. burgdorferi B31 revealed an epigenetic impact of methylation on the global transcriptome, the current data contradict those findings; our analyses of wild-type B. burgdorferi B31 revealed no consistent differences in gene expression among isogenic derivatives lacking one or more restriction/modification enzyme(s).
Project description:The similarity of Lyme borreliosis to other diseases and the complex pathogenesis cause diagnostic and therapeutic difficulties. Changes at the cellular and molecular level after Borrelia sp. infection remain still poorly understood. Therefore, the present study focused on the gene expression in human dermal fibroblasts in differentiation of infection with Borrelia garinii, Borrelia afzelii and Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto spirochetes.
