Excerpt:

Dr. Robert Lane received a B.A. degree in psychology from the
University of California at Berkeley (UCB), an M.A. degree in
biology at San Francisco State College, and a Ph.D. in entomology
at UCB. While employed as a California State public health
biologist he began his long-standing studies of the biology of
ticks and the ecology and epidemiology of tick-borne disease
agents. In 1984, Dr. Lane joined the faculty of UCB as a medical
entomologist, a position he has held until the present. The
diseases he and his many co-workers have investigated include
Colorado tick fever, human granulocytic anaplasmosis, relapsing
fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, tularemia, and particularly
Lyme disease. Findings from these studies have elucidated the
basic transmission cycles of and risk factors for spotted
fever-group rickettsiae and Lyme disease spirochetes in the far
western United States. Bob is a Fellow of both the California
Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, a recipient of a UCB Biology Faculty
Research Award and the C.W.

Benoit VM, Petrich A, Alugupalli KR, Marty-Roix R, Moter A, Leong JM, Boyartchuk VL.

Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, and Program in Gene Function and Expression, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01605; Institut für Mikrobiologie und Hygiene, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Charité Mitte, 10117 Berlin, Germany; Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA 19107.

Host susceptibility to infection is controlled in large measure by the genetic makeup of the host. Spirochetes of the genus Borrelia include nearly 40 species of vector-borne spirochetes that are capable of infecting a wide range of mammalian hosts, causing Lyme disease and relapsing fever. Relapsing fever is associated with high-level bacteremia, as well as hematologic manifestations such as thrombocytopenia (i.e. low platelet numbers) and anemia. To facilitate studies of genetic control of susceptibility to Borrelia hermsii infection we performed a systematic analysis of the course of infection using immunocompetent and immunocompromised inbred strains of mice. Our analysis revealed that sensitivity to B. hermsii infections is genetically controlled. In addition, whereas the role of adaptive immunity to relapsing fever spirochetes is well documented, we found that innate immunity contributes significantly to reduction of bacterial burden. Similar to human infection, progression of the disease in mice was associated with thrombocytopenia and anemia. Histological and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis of infected tissues indicated that red blood cells were removed by tissue resident macrophages, a process that could lead to anemia. Spirochetes in the spleen and liver were often visualized associated with RBCs, lending support to the hypothesis that direct interaction of B. hermsii spirochetes with RBCs leads to clearance of bacteria from the bloodstream by tissue phagocytes.

PMID: 19995898 [PubMed – as supplied by publisher]