1887

Abstract

, an agent of human granulocytic anaplasmosis, infects neutrophils and causes an emerging tickborne febrile disease. The genome of this bacterium contains a large number of /-related genes encoding 44 kDa major outer-membrane proteins, and it is known that a specific / gene is predominantly transcribed from a single expression locus. This study successfully characterized the genomic expression site for / (3.8 kb) in uncultured from ticks inhabiting a northern part of Japan. Comparative analysis of the sequences revealed that the structures of the expression sites in Japanese were similar to those of US strains from human patients and European strains from a dog and sheep, but (upstream from /) and a truncated (downstream from /) in the / expression site seemed to share similarities with those of US and European strains. The central hypervariable region sequences of Japanese / were found to be quite diverse (24.4–100 % amino acid similarities) and distinct from their closest relatives from US human patients or animal host origins (56.3–97.6 % amino acid similarities) with some exceptions. Thus, this study provides significant information about the molecular characteristics of in East Asia, as well as the global diversity of /.

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2009-12-01
2024-03-29
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