Delineation of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato species by multilocus sequence analysis and confirmation of the delineation of Borrelia spielmanii sp nov.

To evaluate multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) for taxonomic purposes in the delineation of species within Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, seven relevant loci of various strains for which extensive DNA-DNA reassociation data were available were sequenced. MLSA delineation proved to be fully concordant with conventional methods. Our analysis confirmed the delineation of a novel species, Borrelia spielmanii sp. nov., previously known as 'Borrelia spielmani' Richter et al. 2004, with strain PC-Eq17N5(T) (= DSM 16813(T)=Clp108855(T)) as the type strain.