Understanding Lyme Disease

In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that the 30,000 US cases of Lyme disease that are reported to the CDC each year likely represent only a tenth of the diagnoses, which the agency estimated at closer to 300,000. The prevalence of Lyme disease in the Northeast and upper Midwest makes learning more about the spirochete bacterial species that causes Lyme, Borrelia burgdorferi, a scientific priority. A group of researchers from the University of Calgary in Canada and the University of Connecticut Health Center have now shown that a bacterial protein, HrpA, is an RNA helicase that regulates RNA post-transcriptionally, which is necessary both for tick transmission of the microbe and for infection of a mouse host by B. burgdorferi.

Read more:
Understanding Lyme 

Source: The Scientist

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