Yasuyuki Goto, Darrick Carter, Jeffrey Guderian, Noboru Inoue, Shin-Ichiro Kawazu, Steven G Reed
Proteins with tandem repeat (TR) domains have been found in various protozoan parasites, and they are often targets of B-cell responses. Through systematic analyses of whole proteomes, we recently demonstrated that two trypanosomatid parasites, Leishmania infantum and Trypanosoma cruzi, are rich in antigenic proteins with large TR domains. However, the reason that these proteins are antigenic was unclear. Here, by performing molecular, immunological, and bioinformatic characterizations of Leishmania TR proteins, we found two possible factors affecting the antigenicity of these proteins; one factor is their fundamental composition as TR proteins, and the other is regulation of their expression by parasites...
May 2010: Infection and Immunity