Jill - plot thickens on adhesion

[Guest guest]

These guys

http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/168/2/713

find that OspC allele classes are different in different vertebrate

hosts.

They say there are 22 OspC allele classes in Bb sensu stricto, that

are all very sharply defined. Four classes can infect humans. X

number of different ones can infect a given vertebrate species, while

the rest cannot. Of non-human mammals, White-footed Mouse carries a

particularly high number of classes which are able to infect man. It

appears that very many wild vertebrate individuals carry every or

almost every class its species is capable of accomodating.

The function of OspC is unknown.

One possible explanation they present for these observations is that

the adaptive immune system of vertebrate N might be particularly good

at recognizing a certain class of OspC, and therefore it is able to

blast the crap out of any Bb carrying that class, thus rejecting

infection. This strikes me as very unlikely given the great allelic

diversity, in mice and humans alike, of the MHC molecules that govern

adaptive immunity.

That leaves only one of the explanations they present, which is that

OspC pertains to adhesion. So maybe there is some unifying thing

going on with adhesion to all the different human substrates - or

maybe something else is going on here.