Merino Emilio F, Fernandez-Becerra Carmen, Durham Alan M, Ferreira João E, Tumilasci Vanessa F, d'Arc-Neves Joana, da Silva-Nunes Monica, Ferreira Marcelo U, Wickramarachchi Thilan, Udagama-Randeniya Preethi, Handunnetti Shiroma M, Del Portillo Hernando A
Departamento de Parasitologia, Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas, Universidade de São, Paulo, Av. Lineu Prestes 1374, São Paulo, SP 05508-900, Brazil.
Mol Biochem Parasitol. 2006 Sep;149(1):10-6. doi: 10.1016/j.molbiopara.2006.04.002. Epub 2006 May 11.
Plasmodium vivax, the most widely distributed human malaria parasite, contains the subtelomeric multigene vir superfamily corresponding to circa 10% of its coding genome. In this work, we used a multi-character strategy to study the vir gene repertoire circulating in natural parasite populations obtained directly from 32 human patients from endemic regions of Brazil and Sri Lanka. Cladistic analysis confirmed the existence of vir subfamilies, which varied in size and allele polymorphisms. Moreover, different motifs, protein domain, and secondary structures were predicted for each subfamily. Of importance, not all vir sequences possess a recognizable Pexel motif recently shown to be important, though not essential, signal for transportation to the cell membrane of infected red blood cells. Furthermore, subfamilies A and D display common structural features with the recently described P. falciparum SURFIN and Pfmc-2tm subtelomeric multigene families. These results suggest that VIR proteins can have different subcellular localizations and functions. This is the first study on a population level of the P. vivax vir subtelomeric multigene superfamily.
间日疟原虫是分布最广泛的人类疟原虫，其亚端粒多基因vir超家族约占其编码基因组的10%。在这项研究中，我们采用多特征策略，研究了直接从巴西和斯里兰卡流行地区的32名人类患者身上获得的自然寄生虫群体中循环的vir基因库。分支分析证实了vir亚家族的存在，其大小和等位基因多态性各不相同。此外，还预测了每个亚家族的不同基序、蛋白质结构域和二级结构。重要的是，并非所有的vir序列都具有最近被证明对转运到受感染红细胞细胞膜很重要（虽然不是必需）的可识别的Pexel基序。此外，A和D亚家族与最近描述的恶性疟原虫SURFIN和Pfmc - 2tm亚端粒多基因家族具有共同的结构特征。这些结果表明，VIR蛋白可能具有不同的亚细胞定位和功能。这是首次在群体水平上对间日疟原虫vir亚端粒多基因超家族进行研究。
