ArticlePloS one2013
Suggested role for G4 DNA in recombinational switching at the antigenic variation locus of the Lyme disease spirochete.
Article in PloS one, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Breaking a barrier: In trans vlsE recombination and genetic manipulation of the native vlsE gene of the Lyme disease pathogen.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Review
- Meta-analysis of the Vmp-like sequences of Lyme diseaseFrontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- Article
- The Putative Endonuclease Activity of MutL Is Required for the Segmental Gene Conversion Events That Drive Antigenic Variation of the Lyme Disease Spirochete.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- G-Quadruplex Structures in Bacteria: Biological Relevance and Potential as an Antimicrobial Target.Journal of bacteriology · 2021Review
- The Brilliance ofPathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Changing of the guard: How the Lyme disease spirochete subverts the host immune response.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2020Review
- Exploring Computational and Biophysical Tools to Study the Presence of G-Quadruplex Structures: A Promising Therapeutic Solution for Drug-ResistantFrontiers in genetics · 2020Article
- Transcriptional initiation of a small RNA, not R-loop stability, dictates the frequency of pilin antigenic variation in Neisseria gonorrhoeae.Molecular microbiology · 2019Article
- G-Quadruplexes: More Than Just a Kink in Microbial Genomes.Trends in microbiology · 2019Review
- The Interplay between G-quadruplex and Transcription.Current medicinal chemistry · 2019Review
- Yeast Sub1 and human PC4 are G-quadruplex binding proteins that suppress genome instability at co-transcriptionally formed G4 DNA.Nucleic acids research · 2017Article
- Antigenic Variation in Bacterial Pathogens.Microbiology spectrum · 2016Article
- G-quadruplexes and their regulatory roles in biology.Nucleic acids research · 2015Review
- G-quadruplexes in pathogens: a common route to virulence control?PLoS pathogens · 2015Review
- vls Antigenic Variation Systems of Lyme Disease Borrelia: Eluding Host Immunity through both Random, Segmental Gene Conversion and Framework Heterogeneity.Microbiology spectrum · 2014Review
- The telomere resolvase of the Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi, promotes DNA single-strand annealing and strand exchange.Nucleic acids research · 2013Article
- Eubacterial SpoVG homologs constitute a new family of site-specific DNA-binding proteins.PloS one · 2013Article
- G-quadruplexes in bacteria: insights into the regulatory roles and interacting proteins of non-canonical nucleic acid structures.Critical reviews in biochemistry and molecular biologyReview
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Antigenic variation through targeted DNA rearrangements provides a powerful diversity generating mechanism that allows a variety of pathogens to stay one step ahead of acquired immunity in their hosts. The Lyme disease spirochete encodes such a system that is required for persistent infection. The vls locus, carried on a 29 kb linear plasmid (lp28-1) in the type strain B31, carries 15 silent cassettes from which information is unidirectionally transferred into the expression locus, vlsE. Recent studies have surprisingly shown that, with the exception of the RuvAB branch migrase, no other known recombination/repair proteins appear to play a role in the recombinational switching process. In the work presented here we show that G4 DNA can be formed by sequences within the B31 vlsE locus, prompting us to investigate the presence of potential G4-forming DNA throughout the vls locus of several Lyme spirochete strains and species. We found that runs of G, three nucleotides and longer occur at a very high density, with a greater than 100-fold strand-specific distribution in the vls locus of three B. burgdorferi strains as well as in B. afzelii and B. garinii, in spite of the bias for the use of A-T rich codons in Borrelia species. Our findings suggest the possibility that G4 DNA may be a mediator of recombinational switching at the vlsE locus in the Lyme spirochetes.
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