Adhesion to cultured tick cells by recombinant <i>E</i>. <i>coli</i> producing surface-exposed <i>A</i>. <i>phagocytophilum</i> proteins.

E. coli strains were grown and induced for the production of recombinant proteins. E. coli strains with expression vector alone producing recombinant Thioredoxin and A. marginale MSP1a were used as negative and positive control, respectively. Adhesive bacteria were quantitated as the number of colony forming units (CFU) recovered from each test and compared to the Thioredoxin control values by Student’s t-test for paired samples (*P<0.05). GroEL and HSP70 were produced as full-length and short-length (amino acids 275–475 and 262–460 for GroEL and HSP70, respectively) proteins. Adhesion to cultured tick cells by recombinant E. coli producing surface-exposed A. phagocytophilum proteins.