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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Oct 1995, 2679-2685, Vol 33, No. 10
Y Xu and RC Johnson
The relationship between plasmid profiles and genospecies of the Lyme
disease borreliae was investigated by using 40 strains from diverse
biological and geographical sources. The genospecies of the strains were
determined by examination of rRNA gene restriction patterns with cDNA
probes complementary to the 16S and 23S rRNAs of Escherichia coli. Plasmid
profiles were obtained by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. The number of
plasmids per strain and the size of these plasmids ranged from 4 to 10 and
from 13.3 to 57.7 kb, respectively. The strains all contained a single
large plasmid of 50 to 57.7 kb, with the exception of two Borrelia garinii
strains that contained two or three of the large plasmids. The large
plasmids of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto strains ranged in size from
51.4 to 52.7 kb and were consistently smaller than the 54.0- to 57.7-kb
plasmids present in B. garinii and Borrelia afzelii. The exceptions of this
observation were the two B. garinii strains with multiple large plasmids;
in this case the large plasmids were 50.6 to 53 kb. Although a large degree
of heterogeneity in the sizes and frequencies of occurrence of smaller
plasmids was observed, there were some differences among the three
genospecies. The differences in plasmids were further studied by using two
BamHI DNA fragments from a 28.7-kb plasmid of B. burgdorferi sensu stricto
297 as probes. Both probes hybridized with the 27- to 29-kb plasmids of B.
burgdorferi sensu stricto strains. In contrast, two patterns of
hybridization were observed with B. garinii and B. afzelii.(ABSTRACT
TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Copyright © 1995 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Analysis and comparison of plasmid profiles of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato strains
Department of Microbiology, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis 55455, USA.
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