Question

1. ) Answer the following questions regarding Lyme disease using data from the table below to support your answers.
   Table 22.5 strain used to infect mice B. burgdorferi in mouse tissue ticks reinfected 44.4 17.6 wild type infection route injection tick bite injection tick bite injection tick bite antibodies present 77.8 83.3 0 0 92.8 83.3 0 0 OSP-C negative 0 0 66.7 66.7 18.5 OSP-C reinserted 75 75 56.7
   Limit your answers to a maximum of two sentences for each part.
   1. What cellular function does the pathogen disrupt to cause the terrible consequences?

2. Describe briefly what the three treatments in the table below represent, and what conclusion you come to regarding the data obtained by this experiment.

Answer 1

a) The OSP-C is a lipoprotein known as an antiphagocytic factor. This means the pathogen disrupts phagocytosis

b) Each treatment address the pathogenicity of B. burdorgferi in different states of OSP-C factor:

Wild type: Just how a regular strain would work in mice, it works as a control treatment

OSP-C negative: The main treatment, testing what would happen to disease development if we block this single factor

OSP-C reinserted: This treatment reinserts the OSP-C factor to check if the negative strain can recover pathogenicity by only reacquiring this factor