UConn Health

December 23, 2013 | Christopher DeFrancesco '95 (CLAS) - UConn Health

Health Center Lab Helps Advance Lyme Disease Understanding

Dr. Justin Radolf and Melissa Caimano joined Canadian researchers to identify an essential factor for Lyme disease transmission.

Deer Tick (Ixodes Scapularis).

Deer Tick (Ixodes Scapularis). Photo by Anita Amento

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Dr. Justin Radolf
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Melissa Caimano
Dr. Justin Radolf and Melissa Caimano from the UConn Health Center’s Spirochete Research Labs have contributed to research identifying an essential factor for transmission of Lyme disease from ticks to mammals.

Working with researchers from the University of Calgary, the Radolf Lab helped analyze a protein in the bacterium that causes Lyme disease known as HrpA, and concluded that it is involved in the bacterium’s life cycle in both animal infection and tick transmission.

The study, published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, is available at http://bit.ly/LymePLOS13.

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