RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article T1 Overexpression of BbCsrA (BB0184) alters morphology and antigen profiles in Borrelia burgdorferi A1 Sanjuan Caro, Eva A1 Esteve Gassent, Maria D. A1 Maruskova, Mahulena A1 Seshu, J. A2 BioquímicaMicrobiología, Biología Celular y Genética AB Borrelia burgdorferi, the agent of Lyme disease, alters its gene expression in response to highly disparate environmental signals encountered in its hosts. Among the relatively few regulators of adaptive gene expression present in the borrelial genome is an open reading frame (ORF), BB0184, annotated as CsrA (carbon storage regulator A). CsrA, in several bacterial species, has been characterized as a small RNA binding protein thatfunctions as a global regulator affecting mRNA stability or levels of translation of multiple ORFs. Consistent withknown functions of CsrA, overexpression of CsrA from B. burgdorferi (CsrABb) in Escherichia coli resulted in reduced accumulation of glycogen. We determined that csrABb is part of the flgK motility operon and that the synthesis ofCsrABb was increased when B. burgdorferi was propagated under fed-tick conditions. Overexpression of CsrABb inB. burgdorferi strain B31 (ML23, lp25-negative clonal isolate) resulted in a clone, designated ES25, which exhibitedalterations in colony morphology and a significant reduction in the levels of FlaB. Several lipoproteins previouslycharacterized as playing a role in infectivity were also altered in ES25. Real-time reverse transcription-PCR analysisof RNA revealed significant differences in the transcriptional levels of ospC in ES25, while there were no suchdifferences in the levels of other transcripts, suggesting posttranscriptional regulation of expression of these lattergenes. These observations indicate that CsrABb plays a role in the regulation of expression of pathophysiologicaldeterminants of B. burgdorferi, and further characterization of CsrABb will help in better understanding of theregulators of gene expression in B. burgdorferi. YR 2009 FD 2009 LK http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/35684 UL http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/35684 LA en NO DOI: 10.1128/IAI.00673-09 DS Repositorio institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna RD 16-ago-2024