Multiple and Diverse XXXX and vlp Sequences in @entity12732 miyamotoi, a Hard Tick-Borne Zoonotic Pathogen.

@entity1 @entity3001 @entity19 @entity12732 @entity48372 @entity221 @entity9893
UNASSIGNED: Based on chromosome sequences, the @entity1 pathogen @entity12732 miyamotoi phylogenetically clusters with species that cause relapsing @entity221 . But atypically for relapsing @entity221 agents, B. miyamotoi is transmitted not by soft ticks but by hard ticks, which also are vectors of @entity3001 @entity12732 species. To further assess the relationships of B. miyamotoi to species that cause relapsing @entity221 , I investigated extrachromosomal sequences of a North American strain with specific attention on plasmid-borne @entity48372 and vlp genes, which are the underpinnings of antigenic variation during relapsing @entity221 . For a hybrid approach to achieve assemblies that spanned more than one of the paralogous @entity48372 and vlp genes, a database of short-reads from next-generation sequencing was supplemented with long-reads obtained with real-time DNA sequencing from single polymerase molecules. This yielded three contigs of 31, 16, and 11 kb, which each contained multiple and diverse sequences that were homologous to @entity48372 and vlp genes of the relapsing @entity221 agent @entity9893 . Two plasmid fragments had coding sequences for plasmid partition proteins that differed from each other from paralogous proteins for the megaplasmid and a small plasmid of B. miyamotoi. One of 4 @entity48372 genes, vsp1, was present at two loci, one of which was downstream of a candiate prokaryotic promoter. A limited RNA-seq analysis of a population growing in the blood of @entity19 indicated that of the 4 different @entity48372 genes vsp1 was the one that was expressed. The findings indicate that B. miyamotoi has at least four types of plasmids, two or more of which bear @entity48372 and vlp gene sequences that are as numerous and diverse as those of relapsing @entity221 @entity12732 . The database and insights from these findings provide a foundation for further investigations of the immune responses to this pathogen and of the capability of B. miyamotoi for antigenic variation.
