Machine learning-driven identification of virulence determinants in Borrelia burgdorferi associated with human dissemination (opens in new tab)

Author summary Lyme disease, caused by Borrelia burgdorferi (Bb), afflicts over 470,000 Americans annually, yet predicting which infections will progress from localized to disseminated disease remains a critical clinical challenge. Despite decades of research, the bacterial factors underlying these divergent disease trajectories have remained poorly understood. To address this gap, we leveraged the largest collection of clinical Bb genomes to date and applied machine learning to identify spec...