Treponema pallidum at 100,000x

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This free PDF illustrates Radolf, , etc's conception of spirochetal

immunoevasion. You can see that the benign treponeme species has many

more exposed proteins than has Tp.

This same work has been done on Bb and Radolf feels its exposed

protein architecture is not radical enough to explain its

immunoevasion. However he notes that this work was done on cultured

organisms; recent findings are that Bb exposed proteins may be much

downreg'd in vivo. In fact Radolf says antibody will kill cultured

organisms powerfully. This presumably reflects a different outer

surface architecture with presumably more exposed proteins.

Still, the idea that these organisms are chiefly extracellular and

evade immunity in this way is still just a theory to me.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?

artid=210310 & blobtype=pdf