Susceptibility to infection with Borrelia afzelii and TLR2 polymorphism in a wild reservoir host.
- Gomez-Chamorro A Institut de Biologie, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
- Battilotti F Institut de Biologie, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
- Cayol C Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
- Mappes T Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
- Koskela E Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
- Boulanger N Facultés de Médecine et de Pharmacie, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France.
- Genné D Institut de Biologie, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
- Sarr A Institut de Biologie, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
- Voordouw MJ Institut de Biologie, Université de Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland. maarten.voordouw@usask.ca.
- 2019-05-02
Published in:
- Scientific reports. - 2019
English
The study of polymorphic immune genes in host populations is critical for understanding genetic variation in susceptibility to pathogens. Controlled infection experiments are necessary to separate variation in the probability of exposure from genetic variation in susceptibility to infection, but such experiments are rare for wild vertebrate reservoir hosts and their zoonotic pathogens. The bank vole (Myodes glareolus) is an important reservoir host of Borrelia afzelii, a tick-borne spirochete that causes Lyme disease. Bank vole populations are polymorphic for Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2), an innate immune receptor that recognizes bacterial lipoproteins. To test whether the TLR2 polymorphism influences variation in the susceptibility to infection with B. afzelii, we challenged pathogen-free, lab-born individuals of known TLR2 genotype with B. afzelii-infected ticks. We measured the spirochete load in tissues of the bank voles. The susceptibility to infection with B. afzelii following an infected tick bite was very high (95%) and did not differ between TLR2 genotypes. The TLR2 polymorphism also had no effect on the spirochete abundance in the tissues of the bank voles. Under the laboratory conditions of our study, we did not find that the TLR2 polymorphism in bank voles influenced variation in the susceptibility to B. afzelii infection.
- Language
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- English
- Open access status
- gold
- Identifiers
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- DOI 10.1038/s41598-019-43160-3
- PMID 31040326
- Persistent URL
- https://sonar.ch/global/documents/278179
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