New Northeastern lab studying ticks and Lyme disease may offer clues about the bacterium that causes infection
Most people try to keep their distance from the deer tick that transmits Lyme disease and the bacterium that causes it.
Not researcher Constantin Takacs. He plans to order one and is cultivating the other in his new lab at Northeastern.
For Takacs, who joined the faculty in January as an assistant professor of biology, few bacteria are as interesting as Borrelia burgdorferi, the corkscrew-shaped organism—called a spirochete—that spreads Lyme disease via tick bites.
“This is a very unusual bacterium. It’s not organized the same as other bacteria. It’s even different from other spirochetes,” says Takacs, whose lab will be dedicated to the study of the spirochete and its tick vector.
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