No iron in Lyme
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Correspondence: William Wells wells@biotext.com
Genome Biology 2000, 1:spotlight-20000609-02 doi:10.1186/gb-spotlight-20000609-02
The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:
| Published: | 9 June 2000 |
© 2000 BioMed Central Ltd
Research news
Iron sequestration is one way that human cells limit bacterial growth. In the 2 June issue of Science, Posey and Gherardini show that the Lyme disease pathogen, Borrelia burgdorferi, has responded by eliminating most genes that encode iron-requiring proteins, and substituting manganese for iron in the few metalloproteins that are left (Science 2000, 288:1651-1653). This is possible because the bacterium is an obligate parasite that lacks the enzymes for most biosynthetic pathways. As a result the bacterium grows happily with fewer than 10 atoms of iron present per cell.
References
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[http://www.sciencemag.org/] webcite
Science Magazine