{"doi":"10.1128/jcm.02313-20","title":"Visualizing Borrelia burgdorferi Infection Using a Small-Molecule Imaging Probe","abstract":"diagnostic imaging of bacterial infections is currently reliant on targeting their metabolic pathways, an ineffective method to identify microbial species with low metabolic activity. Here, we establish HS-198 as a small-molecule fluorescent conjugate that selectively targets the highly conserved bacterial protein HtpG (high-temperature protein G), within Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium responsible for Lyme disease. We describe the use of HS-198 to target morphologic forms of B. burgdorferi in both the logarithmic growth phase and the metabolically dormant stationary phase as well as in inactivated spirochetes. Furthermore, in a murine infection model, systemically injected HS-198 identified B. burgdorferi as revealed by imaging in postnecropsy tissue sections. These findings demonstrate how small-molecule probes directed at conserved bacterial protein targets can function to identify the microbe using noninvasive imaging and potentially as scaffolds to deliver antimicrobial agents to the pathogen.","journal":"Journal of Clinical Microbiology","year":2021,"id":209175,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":4,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9587,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":584876,"name":"David A. Alcorta","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":584877,"name":"Andrew E. Padilla","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":584878,"name":"Dakota W. Nollner","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":584879,"name":"Nicole R. Hasenkampf","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":584880,"name":"Havard S. Lambert","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":536215,"name":"Monica E. Embers","orcid":"0000-0003-4051-7592","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":584881,"name":"Neil L. Spector","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":584117,"name":"Madeline Sell","orcid":"0000-0002-5725-9449","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":43,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:52:01.526969Z","pmid":"33910962","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}