Dr. Justin Radolf and Melissa Caimano from the UConn Health Center’s Spirochete Research Labs have contributed to research identifying an essential factor for transmission of Lyme disease from ticks to mammals.

Working with researchers from the University of Calgary, the Radolf Lab helped analyze a protein in the bacterium that causes Lyme disease known as HrpA, and concluded that it is involved in the bacterium’s life cycle in both animal infection and tick transmission.

The study, published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, is available at http://bit.ly/LymePLOS13.

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