RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Population structure of <em>Borrelia garinii</em> from <em>Ixodes uriae</em> collected in seabird colonies of the northwestern Atlantic Ocean
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 296319
DO 10.1101/296319
A1 Hannah J. Munro
A1 Nicholas H. Ogden
A1 Samir Mechai
A1 L. Robbin Lindsay
A1 Gregory J. Robertson
A1 Hugh Whitney
A1 Andrew S. Lang
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/04/06/296319.abstract
AB The occurrence of Borrelia garinii in seabird ticks, Ixodes uriae, associated with different species of colonial seabirds has been studied since the early 1990s. Research on the population structure of this bacterium in ticks from seabird colonies in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean has revealed admixture between marine and terrestrial tick populations. We studied B. garinii population structure in I. uriae collected from seabird colonies in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. We applied a multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) scheme to B. garinii found in ticks from four species of seabirds. The B. garinii strains found in this seabird colony ecosystem were diverse. Some were very similar to strains from Asia and Europe, including some obtained from human clinical samples, while others formed a divergent group specific to this region of the Atlantic Ocean.Importance This study provides the first B. garinii sequences from North American seabird ticks that were characterized using an MLST approach. This revealed new MLST sequence types and alleles, enhancing our knowledge of B. garinii diversity. Our findings highlight the genetic complexity of B. garinii circulating among seabird ticks and their avian hosts but also demonstrate surprisingly close connections between B. garinii in this ecosystem and terrestrial sources in Eurasia. Genetic similarities among B. garinii from seabird ticks and humans indicate the possibility that B. garinii circulating within seabird tick-avian host transmission cycles could directly, or indirectly via connectivity with terrestrial transmission cycles, have consequences for human health.