Chemotaxis, in simple words, is the movement of an organism towards a chemical stimulus. Borrelia burgdorferi which causes Lymes disease in Humans, completes its Enzootic life cycle in both humans and ticks.
A two-component system mediates the direction or speed of flagellar rotation. The CheA gene product is a Histidine kinase receptor. When this histidine kinase receptor comes in contact with an chemical stimulus, such as N-acetyl-d-glucosamine, it gets phosphorylated and this in turn phosphorylates another molecule which is the product of the gene CheY.
This CheY when phosphorylated interacts with the motor switch proteins and controls the rotational direction of flagellar motors. In this way chemotaxis plays an important role in pathogenesis of Borrelia burgdorferi.
