Molecular characterization of tickborne relapsing fever Borrelia, Israel

Abstract

Blood samples from 18 tickborne relapsing fever (TBRF) patients and Ornithodoros tholozani specimens were tested with a Borrelia flaB-PCR. Results were positive for all patients and 2%–40% of ticks. A 7–amino acid gap characterized all 9 sequenced flagellin gene amplicons. By phylogenetic analysis, Israel TBRF Borrelia sequences clustered separately from American and African groups.

Figure 1

Ornithodoros tholozani ventral (A) and dorsal (B) views.

Figure 2

Phylogenetic tree based on flaB nucleotide sequences. The tree was constructed by the neighbor-joining method in a pairwise deletion procedure. Distances were calculated according to the Jukes and Cantor method. Numbers at nodes correspond to the percentage confidence level in a bootstrap test performed on 1,000 replicates. The scale bar corresponds to a 0.01 distance. The GenBank accession numbers for nucleotide sequences of Borrelia persica flaB shown here are as follows: HumanBloodFL1 (DQ673617), HumanBloodC1015B (DQ679904), OtholozaniCBkc7 (DQ679905), HumanBlood1 (DQ679906), HumanBlood2 (DQ679907), HumanBlood3 (DQ679908), HumanBlood4 (DQ679909), OtholozaniTG52 (DQ679910), and OtholozaniTGd1 (DQ679911).

Figure A1

CLUSTAL W multiple alignment of 9 Israeli tickborne relapsing fever sequences (bold letters indicate variable amino acid positions as shown in Table 2). The GenBank accession numbers for nucleotide sequences of Borrelia persica flaB shown here are as follows: HumanBloodFL1 (DQ673617), HumanBloodC1015B (DQ679904), OtholozaniCBkc7 (DQ679905), HumanBlood1 (DQ679906), HumanBlood2 (DQ679907), HumanBlood3 (DQ679908), HumanBlood4 (DQ679909), OtholozaniTG52 (DQ679910) and OtholozaniTGd1 (DQ679911).