del Portillo H A, Fernandez-Becerra C, Bowman S, Oliver K, Preuss M, Sanchez C P, Schneider N K, Villalobos J M, Rajandream M A, Harris D, Pereira da Silva L H, Barrell B, Lanzer M
Departamento de Parasitologia, Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Lineu Prestes 1374, São Paulo, SP 05508-900, Brazil.
Nature. 2001 Apr 12;410(6830):839-42. doi: 10.1038/35071118.
The malarial parasite Plasmodium vivax causes disease in humans, including chronic infections and recurrent relapses, but the course of infection is rarely fatal, unlike that caused by Plasmodium falciparum. To investigate differences in pathogenicity between P. vivax and P. falciparum, we have compared the subtelomeric domains in the DNA of these parasites. In P. falciparum, subtelomeric domains are conserved and contain ordered arrays of members of multigene families, such as var, rif and stevor, encoding virulence determinants of cytoadhesion and antigenic variation. Here we identify, through the analysis of a continuous 155,711-base-pair sequence of a P. vivax chromosome end, a multigene family called vir, which is specific to P. vivax. The vir genes are present at about 600-1,000 copies per haploid genome and encode proteins that are immunovariant in natural infections, indicating that they may have a functional role in establishing chronic infection through antigenic variation.
间日疟原虫可导致人类患病，包括慢性感染和反复复发，但与恶性疟原虫引起的感染不同，间日疟原虫感染病程很少致命。为了研究间日疟原虫和恶性疟原虫致病性的差异，我们比较了这些寄生虫DNA中的亚端粒区域。在恶性疟原虫中，亚端粒区域是保守的，包含多基因家族成员的有序阵列，如var、rif和stevor，它们编码细胞黏附的毒力决定因素和抗原变异。在这里，我们通过分析间日疟原虫染色体末端连续的155,711个碱基对序列，鉴定出一个名为vir的多基因家族，它是间日疟原虫特有的。vir基因在每个单倍体基因组中约有600 - 1000个拷贝，编码在自然感染中具有免疫变异性的蛋白质，这表明它们可能通过抗原变异在建立慢性感染中发挥功能作用。
