Fundamental processes in the evolutionary ecology of Lyme borreliosis

Kurtenbach, Klaus; Haninçová, Klára; Tsao, Jean I.; Margos, Gabriele; Fish, Durland; Ogden, Nicholas H.

doi:10.1038/nrmicro1475

Cited by 410 publications

(512 citation statements)

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“…Borrelia afzelii is one of the 12 named genospecies in the species complex Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato (Kurtenbach et al, 2006). These bacteria are transmitted by ticks and use mammals and birds as their main hosts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genetic structure of Borrelia afzelii varies with geographic but not ecological sampling scale

Hellgren

Andersson

Råberg

2010

Journal of Evolutionary Biology

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The genetic structure of a pathogen is an important determinant of its potential rate of adaptation and can thereby influence the dynamics of host–parasite interactions. We investigated how the genetic structure of Borrelia afzelii varies with geographic and ecological sampling scale. Genetic structure was measured as the degree of linkage disequilibrium (LD) across three loci. To test for the effects of geographic and ecological scale, we calculated LD across or within populations 4–82 km apart and across or within different mammal host species. There was highly significant LD across populations and host species. However, there was also evidence for genome‐wide recombination, and the LD largely resulted from epidemic spread of certain haplotypes, rather than lack of recombination. Interestingly, the degree of LD was higher in each population than in the sample as a whole, i.e. LD increased with decreasing geographic scale. In contrast, there was no effect of ecological sampling scale on LD. Strong LD may impede the rate of adaptive evolution. Our results suggest this effect might be particularly strong at a small geographic scale.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The genetic structure of Borrelia afzelii varies with geographic but not ecological sampling scale

Hellgren

Andersson

Råberg

2010

Journal of Evolutionary Biology

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“…Borrelia afzelii belongs to a species complex including 12 named genospecies [10]. At least three of these cause Lyme disease in humans (besides B. afzelii also Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia garinii [11]). Borrelia afzelii occurs throughout Eurasia [11] and is a multihost pathogen, infecting a wide range of small mammals such as voles, mice and shrews [12,13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At least three of these cause Lyme disease in humans (besides B. afzelii also Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia garinii [11]). Borrelia afzelii occurs throughout Eurasia [11] and is a multihost pathogen, infecting a wide range of small mammals such as voles, mice and shrews [12,13]. Borrelia afzelii is highly clonal, that is, it consists of a number of strains with limited recombination [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Different strains are often distinguished based on the immunodominant outer surface protein C, encoded by the plasmid-borne singlecopy gene ospC [10]. The pairwise difference in DNA sequence between ospC alleles is highly bimodal, with differences either less than 2.6% or more than 5.7% ( [11]; electronic supplementary material, figure S1). A similar pattern occurs in B. burgdorferi [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Within-host competition betweenBorrelia afzelii ospCstrains in wild hosts as revealed by massively parallel amplicon sequencing

Strandh

Råberg

2015

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Infections frequently consist of more than one strain of a given pathogen. Experiments have shown that co-infecting strains often compete, so that the infection intensity of each strain in mixed infections is lower than in single strain infections. Such within-host competition can have important epidemiological and evolutionary consequences. However, the extent of competition has rarely been investigated in wild, naturally infected hosts, where there is noise in the form of varying inoculation doses, asynchronous infections and host heterogeneity, which can potentially alleviate or eliminate competition. Here, we investigated the extent of competition between Borrelia afzelii strains (as determined by ospC genotype) in three host species sampled in the wild. For this purpose, we developed a protocol for 454 amplicon sequencing of ospC , which allows both detection and quantification of each individual strain in an infection. Each host individual was infected with one to six ospC strains. The infection intensity of each strain was lower in mixed infections than in single ones, showing that there was competition. Rank-abundance plots revealed that there was typically one dominant strain, but that the evenness of the relative infection intensity of the different strains in an infection increased with the multiplicity of infection. We conclude that within-host competition can play an important role under natural conditions despite many potential sources of noise, and that quantification by next-generation amplicon sequencing offers new possibilities to dissect within-host interactions in naturally infected hosts.

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“…A long the borders of the northeastern and the upper midwestern United States, black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) are invading new areas (1)(2)(3). Because this tick is the principal vector of a number of human pathogens, defi ning and monitoring its possible expansion are imperative.…”

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confidence: 99%