🔎LYME🔎

Virginia Tech biochemist discovers a possible cellular 🧪cause for Lyme arthritis. Brandon Jutras’s study proposes Lyme associated aches and pains, a painful late-stage progression of the disease, can be caused in part 🧬peptidoglycan shed by Lyme-causing bacteria.

His team found as the bacteria that cause Lyme multiply, a spirochete called Borrelia burgdorferi, they shed the molecule peptidoglycan, which invades joints and causes some patients to have an antibody reaction that creates swelling in joints.🦠

🔬He’s on the hunt for molecules that could bond to peptidoglycan and prevent this response.💉

doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1904170116