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Infection and Immunity, July 2000, p. 3900-3908, Vol. 68, No. 7
0019-9567/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

The Relapsing Fever Spirochete Borrelia hermsii Contains Multiple, Antigen-Encoding Circular Plasmids That Are Homologous to the cp32 Plasmids of Lyme Disease Spirochetes

Brian Stevenson,1,* Stephen F. Porcella,2 Katrina L. Oie,2,dagger Cecily A. Fitzpatrick,2 Sandra J. Raffel,2 Lori Lubke,3 Merry E. Schrumpf,2 and Tom G. Schwan2

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0298,1 and Laboratory of Human Bacterial Pathogenesis2 and Microscopy Branch,3 Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, Montana 59840

Received 27 January 2000/Returned for modification 21 March 2000/Accepted 7 April 2000

Borrelia hermsii, an agent of tick-borne relapsing fever, was found to contain multiple circular plasmids approximately 30 kb in size. Sequencing of a DNA library constructed from circular plasmid fragments enabled assembly of a composite DNA sequence that is homologous to the cp32 plasmid family of the Lyme disease spirochete, B. burgdorferi. Analysis of another relapsing fever bacterium, B. parkeri, indicated that it contains linear homologs of the B. hermsii and B. burgdorferi cp32 plasmids. The B. hermsii cp32 plasmids encode homologs of the B. burgdorferi Mlp and Bdr antigenic proteins and BlyA/BlyB putative hemolysins, but homologs of B. burgdorferi erp genes were absent. Immunoblot analyses demonstrated that relapsing fever patients produced antibodies to Mlp proteins, indicating that those proteins are synthesized by the spirochetes during human infection. Conservation of cp32-encoded genes in different Borrelia species suggests that their protein products serve functions essential to both relapsing fever and Lyme disease spirochetes. Relapsing fever borreliae replicate to high levels in the blood of infected animals, permitting direct detection and possible functional studies of Mlp, Bdr, BlyA/BlyB, and other cp32-encoded proteins in vivo.

* Corresponding author. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, MS 415 Chandler Medical Center, University of Kentucky College of Medicine, Lexington, KY 40536-0298. Phone: (859) 257-9358. Fax: (859) 257-8994. E-mail: bstev0{at}pop.uky.edu.

dagger Present address: Department of Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710.

Infection and Immunity, July 2000, p. 3900-3908, Vol. 68, No. 7
0019-9567/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


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