Title of Document: NOVEL SURFACE PROTEINS IN THE PATHOGENESIS AND DIAGNOSIS OF LYME DISEASE

Lyme disease is caused by an infection with the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi. Transmitted between mammal reservoirs by the bite of an Ixodes tick, the pathogen exists in a complex life cycle that requires long-term persistence in arthropod and mammal hosts. The mechanisms responsible for persistence and the pathogenesis of Lyme disease are not well understood, but may involve interactions between bacterial surface proteins and the host. Previous experiments have shown that differential gene expression of surface proteins assists the pathogen in adaptation and persistence in a new host. Most B. burgdorferi surface proteins have no homology to known proteins, making the identification of virulence factors difficult. Gene expression analyses can be used to identify potentially important gene products for further study, based on the conditions under which they are expressed. To this end, the B. burgdorferi in vivo transcriptome of selected potential surface proteins was analyzed to identify promising targets for further study. Based on these analyses and other observations from the literature, the lipoproteins BbCRASP-2 and