Rendering of the Lyme bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi, its genome, and various RNA transcripts.
Credit: Ethan Tyler, NIH Medical Arts; Philip Adams, Ph.D., NICHD
Lyme disease is an emerging infectious disease and the foremost vector-borne illness in the United States, with almost half a million infections estimated annually. People acquire Lyme disease when bitten by an infected blacklegged tick (deer tick) and the subsequent transmission of Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacterial pathogen.
In all bacteria, gene expression determines the ability of a bacterium to sense its environment and survive; therefore these processes are highly regulated. While mechanisms of gene regulation have been studied extensively in multiple model bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, much less is known about regulatory networks in other important pathogens, including B. burgdorferi.
In a study led by Philip Adams, Ph.D., in the Group on Gene Regulation in Bacterial Pathogens, researchers sought to identify new potential regulators in B. burgdorferi. The team used a method called RNA-sequencing to map the boundaries of all RNA transcripts, also called the transcriptome, in the Lyme pathogen. This dataset is a valuable resource for researchers who study Lyme disease. The team resolved some controversies regarding gene annotation, discovered new insights into fundamental biological processes, and identified numerous potential regulators in the Lyme pathogen.
Collectively, the findings set the stage for characterizing new mechanisms of gene regulation to ultimately better understand and treat Lyme disease.
NICHD co-authors of the paper include Emily Petroni, Caroline Esnault, Daniel Tetreault, Ryan K. Dale, and Gisela Storz.
Learn more about the Cell and Structural Biology Group: https://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/dir/affinity-groups/CSB
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