Borrelia bissettiae sp. nov. and Borrelia californiensis sp. nov. Prevail in Diverse Enzootic Transmission Cycles.

Margos G1, Lane RS2, Fedorova N3, Koloczek J4, Piesman J5, Hojgaard A6, Sing A7, Fingerle V8.

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Abstract

Two Borrelia species, Borrelia bissettiae sp. nov. and Borrelia californiensis sp. nov., were first described by Postic and co-workers (Postic et al., 2007; Postic et al., 1998) based on genetic analyses of several loci. Multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) of eight housekeeping loci confirmed that these two Borrelia genospecies are distinct members of the B. burgdorferi s. l. complex (Margos et al., 2010). B. bissettiae sp. nov. initially was described in transmission cycles involving Neotoma fuscipes wood rats and Ixodes pacificus ticks in California, and Neotoma mexicana and Ixodes spinipalpis in Colorado. The preferred host of B. californiensis sp. nov. appears to be the California kangaroo rat, Dipodomys californicus; Ixodes jellisoni, I. spinipalipis and I. pacificus ticks are naturally infected with it. Thus, the ecological associations of the two genospecies and their genetic distance from all other known Borrelia genospecies species justify their validation as separate genospecies: B. bissettiae sp. nov. DN127T (= DSM 17990 T; = CIP 109136 T) and B. californiensis CA446T (= DSM 17989T; =ATCC BAA-2689TM).