Adhesion to cultured tick cells by recombinant E. coli producing surface-exposed A. phagocytophilum 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 (*PAdhesion to cultured tick cells by recombinant E. coli producing surface-exposed A. phagocytophilum proteins.