an interesting barbour abstract

Cross-species hybridization of a Borrelia burgdorferi DNA array reveals
infection- and culture-associated genes of the unsequenced genome of
the relapsing fever agent Borrelia hermsii.

Zhong J, Barbour AG.

Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, University of
California Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697-4025, USA.

The known genome sequence of Borrelia burgdorferi, an agent of Lyme
borreliosis, was used to study the genetic content and gene expression
in B. hermsii, another spirochete pathogen and a cause of relapsing
fever. Cross-species hybridization of a DNA array representing 1628
open reading frames (ORF) of B. burgdorferi with genomic DNA of B.
hermsii indicated that the latter organism has at least 81% of the
chromosomal genes and 43% of the plasmid genes of B. burgdorferi. We
then carried out quantitative hybridization of the arrays with multiple
replicates of cDNA produced from B. hermsii cells growing in the blood
of infected mice or in culture medium that was adjusted to the same pH,
temperature and a spirochete density as infected blood. Of 642 B.
burgdorferi ORFs hybridized by all replicates under both conditions, 12
(1.9%) demonstrated differential expression by a regularized t-test and
stringent criteria. BBP07 and BBG30, two plasmid-borne ORFs with the
greatest measurable difference in expression between in vivo and in
vitro conditions, putatively encode proteins of unknown function.
Orthologues of BBP07 in B. hermsii were identified, and increased
expression in infected mice was demonstrated by quantitative
reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction.

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