Culture of Borrelia persica and its flagellar antigen in vitro.

Zahra Zamani (1) , Mohammad Arjmand (1) , Farzad Oreiz (2) , Mohammad Soleimani (2) , Seyed Hossein Hosseini (3) , Mehdi Assmar (2) , Saifeddin Javadian (1) , Reza Saghiri (1) , Fatemeh Pourfallah (1)

1 Department of Biochemistry
2 Department of Parasitology
3 Department of Immunology

Borrelia persica is a strain seen only in the Middle East and responsible for relapsing fever. These spirochetes are notable for multiphasic antigenic variation of polymorphic outer membrane lipoproteins, a phenomenon responsible for immune evasion. Diagnosis of the disease is a problem and requires a fixed antigen like the flagellar antigen. In vitro culture of B. persica was carried out for the first time and flagellar antigen was purified from culture. 10% SDS was added to the mixture to dissolve the cell wall and then the solution was sheared in an Omni mixer. Electron microscopy confirmed the purity of a 42 KDa periplasmic antigen as revealed by SDS-PAGE. Indirect haemagglutination kits were designed using the pure flagella and tested for cross reactivity with another relapsing fever spirochaete Borrelia microtii positive serum. The kit showed 98% sensitivity and 95% specificity.

Keywords: Borrelia persica; relapsing fever; indirect haemmaglutination kit

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Microbiology and Parasitology

Zahra Zamani, Mohammad Arjmand, Farzad Oreiz, Mohammad Soleimani, Seyed Hossein Hosseini, et al.. Culture of Borrelia persica and its flagellar antigen in vitro.. Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences, 2014, 17 (2), pp.190-7. ⟨10.3923/pjbs.2014.190.197⟩. ⟨pasteur-01057589⟩