Borrelia burgdorferi

Borrelia burgdorferi
Borrelia burgdorferi
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Prokaryotae Phylum: Spirochaetes Class: Spirochaetes Order: Spirochaetales Genus: Borrelia Species: B. burgdorferi
Binomial name
Borrelia burgdorferi Johnson et al. 1984 emend. Baranton et al. 1992

Borrelia burgdorferi is a species of Gram negative bacteria of the spirochete class of the genus Borrelia. B. burgdorferi is predominant in North America, but also exists in Europe, and is the agent of Lyme disease.

It is a zoonotic, vector-borne disease transmitted by ticks and is named after the researcher Willy Burgdorfer who first isolated the bacterium in 1982.^[1] B. burgdorferi is one of the few pathogenic bacteria that can survive without iron, having replaced all of its iron-sulfur cluster enzymes with enzymes that use manganese, thus avoiding the problem many pathogenic bacteria face in acquiring iron.

B. burgdorferi infections have been linked to non-Hodgkin lymphomas.^[2]

B. burgdorferi (B31 strain) was the third microbial genome ever sequenced, following the sequencing of both H.influenzae and M.genitalium in 1995, and contains 910,725 base pairs and 853 genes.^[3] The sequencing method used was whole genome shotgun. The sequencing project, completed and published in Nature in 1997, was conducted at The Institute for Genomic Research.

References

See also

• Willy Burgdorfer
• Allen Steere
• Jorge Benach

External links

Wikispecies has information related to: Borrelia burgdorferi

• NCBI Borrelia Taxonomy Browser
• Borrelia Microbe Wiki Page
• Borrelia burgdoferi B31 Genome Page

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