{"id":151387,"date":"2019-01-22T08:31:51","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T13:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=151387"},"modified":"2019-06-27T11:42:46","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T15:42:46","slug":"meet-researchers-spirochete-research-labs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/01\/meet-researchers-spirochete-research-labs\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Researchers: Spirochete Labs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who has had to move knows what a pain it is. But imagine not just moving geographically, but switching between completely different biological environments with different nutrients available and immune systems working against you \u2013 well that\u2019s the life cycle of Borrelia burgdorferi <\/em>the bacteria that causes Lyme disease.<\/p>\n

The most prevalent arthropod-borne infection in the United States, the Center for Disease Control reports there are 300,000 cases of Lyme disease annually.<\/p>\n

First discovered in Lyme, Connecticut, this disease is particularly prevalent in the northeast.<\/p>\n

\u201cHumans get infected when they go into a place where the cycle is going on. It doesn\u2019t have to be deep in the woods, it can be in your backyard,\u201d says Justin Radolf, a UConn Health professor of medicine.<\/p>\n

Radolf is leading several research initiatives on Lyme disease in his lab along with associate professor Melissa Caimano and postdoctoral fellow Ashley Groshong in UConn’s Spirochete Research Labs.<\/p>\n

From an evolutionary standpoint, humans have nothing to do with B. burgdorferi<\/em>. The bacteria had adapted to survive in wild animals like mice and ticks. But since ticks are \u201cpromiscuous feeders,\u201d meaning they will latch on to and feed from any organism they can, including humans, B. burgdorferi <\/em>has the opportunity to infect humans.<\/p>\n

The reason humans get sick from Borrelia burgdorferi <\/em>while mice and other hosts don\u2019t is that our immune system is able to identify Borrelia burgdorferi<\/em> as a foreign pathogen and attacks it. This immune response gives rise to the rashes, headaches, fevers, difficulty concentrating, and fatigue associated with Lyme disease.<\/p>\n

One thing that makes B. burgdorferi <\/em>unique compared to other bacteria is that it doesn’t have a mechanism for synthesizing its own amino acids; instead, it picks up peptides from the host.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo other bacteria is known to need to use uptake methods to acquire necessary peptides from their host rather than synthesizing them, in some capacity, themselves,\u201d Groshong says.<\/p>\n

Groshong is looking at how this system operates and how it could potentially be intercepted by creating blockers that mimic the peptides the bacteria needs that lock onto the sites B. burgdorferi<\/em> uses to incorporate those peptides.<\/p>\n

Another critical component of the enzootic cycle, one that involves bacteria moving between different organisms, is understanding how B. burgdorferi <\/em>knows in which kind of organism it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to be able to understand how a bacteria like B. burgdorferi <\/em>is able to accomplish this remarkable feat of going back and forth,\u201d Radolf says.<\/p>\n

Borrelia burgdorferi\u2019s<\/em> genome is regulated by the rpoS gene which is able to turn the expression of 100 other genes on or off depending on the environment.<\/p>\n

This question is the primary focus of Caimano and Radolf\u2019s recent $440,000 NIH grant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe spirochete (spiral-shaped bacteria, i.e. B. burgdorferi<\/em>) has adapted its physiology so it can better compete for nutrients,\u201d Caimano says. \u201cOnce the blood meal comes in, the spirochete is competing with the tick itself for nutrients.\u201d<\/p>\n

How B. burgdorferi <\/em>survives in humans, given its need for peptides provided by the host, is particularly perplexing since human tissue is a rather poor source of peptides.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t think human tissue is flush with peptides,\u201d Groshong says. \u201cIt a limited nutritional environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

One mystery about Lyme disease that remains unsolved is why some people continue to be sick after they have been treated with antibiotics that kill Borrelia burgdorferi.<\/em><\/p>\n

The question is whether the bacteria survive in a persistent form that isn\u2019t impacted by the antibiotics or does it somehow change our immune system to leave it in a perpetually symptomatic state?<\/p>\n

In the lab, researchers culture bacteria in a nutrient-rich environment that encourages growth, however this doesn\u2019t give researchers a very realistic picture of how the bacteria survive in human tissue.<\/p>\n

Groshong is testing if peptide depletion in human tissue gives rise to these persisted cells as a Blackman Fellow of the Global Lyme Alliance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the persistent bacteria exist, their presence can\u2019t be determined by our normal process, so we\u2019re trying to go the long way around and see if they exist,\u201d Groshong says about the research.<\/p>\n

B. burgdorferi <\/em>is a remarkably well-evolved organism and scientists are just beginning to study it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpirochetes have had millions of years to figure this out,\u201d Caimano says.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ve only had a few decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the work being done at UConn Health is certainly making headway into understanding what makes this unique bacteria tick.<\/p>\n

Follow UConn Research on <\/em>Twitter<\/a><\/em> & LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/u><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who has had to move knows what a pain it is. But imagine not just moving geographically, but switching between completely different biological environments with different nutrients available and immune systems working against you \u2013 well that\u2019s the life cycle of Borrelia burgdorferi the bacteria that causes Lyme disease. The most prevalent arthropod-borne infection […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":145302,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2231,2076,1868,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2140],"class_list":["post-151387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-well-being","category-research","category-meds","category-uconn-health","series-meet-the-researcher"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 00:35:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151387"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":151422,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151387\/revisions\/151422"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/145302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151387"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=151387"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=151387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}