Lyme disease, the most common tick-borne disease, is caused by the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi. It is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks while small mammals are confirmed reservoirs.
Because diagnosing Lyme can be difficult, many people who actually have Lyme may be misdiagnosed with other conditions. Untreated patients may go on to develop severe and chronic symptoms affecting skin, joints, the heart, and the nervous system with irreversible damages.
Through their continuing efforts and research on Lyme disease, scientists are trying to understand better the immunologic, rheumatologic, and neurologic impact of this illness in order to improve identification tests.
The specific design of the Precellys, bead beating instrument, allows the user to grind a very large range of samples of blood [1], infected mammals [3] or of the tick itself [2] [APN DU104]. Complete tissue homogenization is needed to extract high quality RNA for further downstream processing such as qPCR [3]. The Precellys Evolution homogenizer, combined with dedicated lysing kits, is the best partner to save time and improve the efficiency of sample preparation protocols.
For DNA, RNA or proteins, the Precellys homogenizer can efficiently grind any sample type while maintaining reproducibility amongst biological replicates and eliminates cross-contamination. This instrument is frequently used on research protocols ensuring a fast and efficient sample disruption process.
[3] Co-infection of Borrelia afzelii and Bartonella spp. in bank voles from a suburban forest.