PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Posey, James E.
AU  - Gherardini, Frank C.
TI  - Lack of a Role for Iron in the Lyme Disease Pathogen
AID  - 10.1126/science.288.5471.1651
DP  - 2000 Jun 02
TA  - Science
PG  - 1651--1653
VI  - 288
IP  - 5471
4099  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/288/5471/1651.short
4100  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/288/5471/1651.full
SO  - Science2000 Jun 02; 288
AB  - A fundamental tenet of microbial pathogenesis is that bacterial pathogens must overcome host iron limitation to establish a successful infection. Surprisingly, the Lyme disease pathogenBorrelia burgdorferi has bypassed this host defense by eliminating the need for iron. B. burgdorferi grew normally and did not alter gene expression in the presence of iron chelators. Furthermore, typical bacterial iron-containing proteins were not detected in cell lysates, nor were the genes encoding such proteins identified in the genome sequence. The intracellular concentration of iron in B. burgdorferi was estimated to be less than 10 atoms per cell, well below a physiologically relevant concentration.