Population structure of Borrelia turcica from Greece and Turkey.

Population structure of Borrelia turcica from Greece and Turkey. Infect Genet Evol. 2019 Oct 29;:104050 Authors: Sabrina H, Volker F, Gerhard DG, Gerit F, Durdica M, Ethan RR, Mercy O, Andreas S, Gabriele M Abstract Borrelia turcica, a member of the reptile-associated Borrelia clade, is vectored by Hyalomma aegyptium. The only suggested reservoir hosts of B. turcica are tortoises of the genus Testudo. Borrelia turcica has been described to occur in several Southeastern European countries including Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece but so far nothing is known about the relationship of these populations and whether or how they are structured. Using multilocus sequence typing (MLST) on eight chromosomally located housekeeping loci (clpA, clpX, nifS, pepX, pyrG, recG, rplB and uvrA) we analyzed 43 B. turcica isolates from Serres, Greece (n = 15) collected in 2017 and Izmir, Turkey (n = 28) collected in 2018. To understand their relationship a maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree and goeBURST analysis were done based on MLST sequence data and allelic profiles, respectively. The data we generated confirmed that the samples of B. turcica investigated here were divergent from Lyme disease (LD) and relapsing fever (RF) species. Within the B. turcica clade, samples of different geographic origin (Greece, Turkey) clustered together in terminal branches; no obvious differences between the Greek and Turkish samples were noticeable. A g...
Source: Infection, Genetics and Evolution - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Authors: Tags: Infect Genet Evol Source Type: research