Borrelia mazzottii is named after French microbiologist Amédée Borrel. Borrel was born in Cazouls-lès-Béziers, Hérault, France in 1867. He studied natural sciences and medicine at the University of Montpellier and became a doctor at age 25 after writing a thesis on epithelioma. In 1892, he became part of the research staff in Ilya Ilyich Metchnikoff’s lab at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. There he performed research on tuberculosis, experimented with a possible vaccine for the bubonic plague, and investigated the potential use of antibody protection in experimental cerebral tetanus. He was the laboratory chief of the microbiology course at the Pasteur Institute from 1896 to 1914, which put him in charge of cultivating and maintaining the collection of microbes in their library. In 1919, he became the Chair of Bacteriology at the University of Strasbourg. When he retired from that position, he returned to the Pasteur Institute and performed research on the causes of cancer until he died in 1936. He is credited for some of the pioneer investigations on the viral theory of cancer. The Borrelia genus consists of helical bacteria cells that are composed of 3-10 loose coils. They are surrounded by a surface layer, an outer membrane, endoflagella, and a protoplasmic cylinder; they are Gram-stain-negative and are actively motile. These bacteria cause tick-borne Lyme disease, relapsing fever, and louse-borne relapsing fever in people. The species Borrelia mazzottii is named after Mexican physician, Luis Mazzotti, who recovered a relapsing fever spirochete in Mexico in 1953.
Krieg, N. R., Ludwig, W., Whitman, W., Hedlund, B. P., Paster, B. J., Staley, J. T., . . . Parte, A. (Eds.). (1984). Bergey’s Manual of Systematic Bacteriology(Vol. 4). Williams & Wilkins.
Revolvy, L. (n.d.). “Amédée Borrel” on Revolvy.com. Retrieved from https://www.revolvy.com/page/Amédée-Borrel
Wright, D. (2009). Borrels accidental legacy. Clinical Microbiology and Infection,15(5), 397-399. doi:10.1111/j.1469-0691.2009.02818.x
Leave a Reply