Novel genospecies of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato from rodents and ticks in southwestern China

Abstract

By using multilocus sequence analysis, five Borrelia valaisiana-related strains isolated from rodents and ticks in southwestern China were eventually classified as a new genospecies of B. burgdorferi sensu lato rather than B. valaisiana. The finding explained the differences in transmission cycle and phenotype between B. valaisiana strains from Europe and B. valaisiana-related strains from eastern Asia.

FIG. 1.

Unrooted NJ phylogenetic tree based on sequences of the rrf-rrl intergenic spacer determined by using the PHYLIP (version 3.65) software package. Numbers at the branch nodes represent bootstrap values as the proportions of 1,000 replications. Isolates used in this study and other strains from China are indicated in bold type. The geographic sources of reference strains are marked after the names of the strains, as follows: Ja for Japan, Eu for Europe, USA for the United States, and Ko for Korea. s.s., sensu stricto.

FIG. 2.

Phylogenetic trees based on concatenated sequences of seven loci, rrs, hbb, groEL, recA, fla, ospA, and the rrf-rrl intergenic spacer, as determined by the DNAML (a) and NJ (b) methods using the PHYLIP (version 3.65) software package. Numbers at the branch nodes represent bootstrap values as the proportions of 1,000 replications. Isolates in this study are indicated in bold type. The geographic sources of reference strains are marked after the names of the strains, as follows: Eu for Europe, USA for the United States, and Ja for Japan. s.s., sensu stricto.