Center for Advanced Microbial Processing, Institute for Molecular Medicine and Infectious Disease, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19102, USA.
Center for Genomic Sciences, Institute for Molecular Medicine and Infectious Disease, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19102, USA.
Genes (Basel). 2022 Sep 8;13(9):1604. doi: 10.3390/genes13091604.
The acceleration of climate change has been associated with an alarming increase in the prevalence and geographic range of tick-borne diseases (TBD), many of which have severe and long-lasting effects-particularly when treatment is delayed principally due to inadequate diagnostics and lack of physician suspicion. Moreover, there is a paucity of treatment options for many TBDs that are complicated by diagnostic limitations for correctly identifying the offending pathogens. This review will focus on the biology, disease pathology, and detection methodologies used for the family which includes the Lyme disease agent . Previous work revealed that genomes differ from most bacteria in that they are composed of large numbers of replicons, both linear and circular, with the main chromosome being the linear with telomeric-like termini. While these findings are novel, additional gene-specific analyses of each class of these multiple replicons are needed to better understand their respective roles in metabolism and pathogenesis of these enigmatic spirochetes. Historically, such studies were challenging due to a dearth of both analytic tools and a sufficient number of high-fidelity genomes among the various taxa within this family as a whole to provide for discriminative and functional genomic studies. Recent advances in long-read whole-genome sequencing, comparative genomics, and machine-learning have provided the tools to better understand the fundamental biology and phylogeny of these genomically-complex pathogens while also providing the data for the development of improved diagnostics and therapeutics.
气候变化的加速与蜱传疾病（TBD）的流行率和地理范围的惊人增加有关，其中许多疾病具有严重和持久的影响 - 特别是当由于诊断不足和医生怀疑不足而导致治疗延迟时。此外，许多 TBD 的治疗选择有限，这是由于诊断限制而无法正确识别致病病原体而变得复杂。这篇综述将重点介绍生物学、疾病病理学和用于包括莱姆病病原体在内的科的检测方法。以前的工作表明，与大多数细菌不同，基因组由大量线性和圆形复制子组成，主要染色体是带有端粒样末端的线性染色体。虽然这些发现是新颖的，但需要对这些多种复制子的每一类进行额外的基因特异性分析，以更好地了解它们在代谢和这些神秘螺旋体发病机制中的各自作用。从历史上看，由于缺乏分析工具以及整个科内各个分类群中足够数量的高保真度基因组，因此此类研究具有挑战性，无法提供用于区分和功能基因组研究的资源。长读长全基因组测序、比较基因组学和机器学习的最新进展为更好地理解这些基因组复杂病原体的基础生物学和系统发育提供了工具，同时也为开发改进的诊断和治疗方法提供了数据。
