About the Authors

Hannah K. Wilder

Affiliation Department of Pediatrics, Section of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Sandra J. Raffel

Affiliation Laboratory of Zoonotic Pathogens, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, Montana, United States of America

Alan G. Barbour

Affiliation Departments of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics, Medicine, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California, United States of America

Stephen F. Porcella

Affiliation Genomics Unit, Research Technologies Section, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, Montana, United States of America

Daniel E. Sturdevant

Affiliation Genomics Unit, Research Technologies Section, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, Montana, United States of America

Benjamin Vaisvil

Affiliation Igenbio, Inc., Chicago, IL, United States of America

Vinayak Kapatral

Affiliation Igenbio, Inc., Chicago, IL, United States of America

Daniel P. Schmitt

Affiliation Igenbio, Inc., Chicago, IL, United States of America

Tom G. Schwan

Affiliation Laboratory of Zoonotic Pathogens, Rocky Mountain Laboratories, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, Montana, United States of America

Job E. Lopez

job.lopez@bcm.edu

Affiliations Department of Pediatrics, Section of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have the following interests. Benjamin Vaisvil, Vinayak Kapatral and Daniel P. Schmitt are employed by Igenbio, Inc. who provided software (ERGO) that was used to annotate and manage the B. turicatae genome after PacBio sequencing. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: HKW AGB SFP TGS JEL. Performed the experiments: HKW SJR DES JEL. Analyzed the data: HKW AGB SFP DES TGS JEL. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: TGS AGB BV VK DPS BV DPS JEL. Wrote the paper: HKW JEL. Developed software that is used to manage the genome of Borrelia turicatae: BV VK DPS.