Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2016 Sep 1;12(9):e1005784.
doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1005784. eCollection 2016 Sep.

Masters of Disguise: Antigenic Variation and the VSG Coat in Trypanosoma brucei

Monica R Mugnier  1 , C Erec Stebbins  2 , F Nina Papavasiliou  1
Affiliations
Review

Masters of Disguise: Antigenic Variation and the VSG Coat in Trypanosoma brucei

Monica R Mugnier et al. PLoS Pathog. .
No abstract available

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. A model of the VSG–antibody interaction.
A hypothetical model of immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibody (teal) binding to VSG (pink and blue). The precise arrangement of VSG on the cell membrane (gray) is unknown, but the packing of VSG on the cell membrane is known to be extremely dense. It is unknown whether IgM binds VSG in this particular configuration, but the dense packing of VSG may nevertheless affect the accessibility of antibody to the C-terminus (pink), as illustrated here. The multimeric IgM is also likely to interact with more than one VSG on the cell surface, resulting in the depicted “staple” conformation. The figure was produced by combining (1) the pentameric C-alpha model of IgM (PDB ID 2RCJ), (2) modeling the remainder of the chains using the FG-MD Server [8] over (3) a planar array of manually positioned VSG N-terminal and C-terminal domains based on the crystal structures of VSG221 (PDB ID 1VSG, 1XU6).
Fig 2
Fig 2. VSG expression dynamics in vivo.
The black line represents the total number of parasites at any given point, and the colored lines represent the number of parasites expressing an individual VSG. Recent work has shown a large diversity of VSGs expressed at one time, emphasizing the importance of the formation of mosaic VSGs, which probably predominate later in infection. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms by which these mosaic variants form.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Cross G.A.M. et al. (2014) Capturing the variant surface glycoprotein repertoire (the VSGnome) of Trypanosoma brucei Lister 427. Mol Biochem Parasitol 195, 59–73 10.1016/j.molbiopara.2014.06.004 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Berriman M. et al. (2005) The genome of the African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei. Science 309, 416–422 - PubMed
    1. Glover L. et al. (2013) Antigenic variation in African trypanosomes: the importance of chromosomal and nuclear context in VSG expression control. Cell Microbiol 15, 1984–1993 10.1111/cmi.12215 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Li B. (2015) DNA double-strand breaks and telomeres play important roles in trypanosoma brucei antigenic variation. Eukaryotic Cell 14, 196–205 10.1128/EC.00207-14 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Grünfelder C.G. et al. (2002) Accumulation of a GPI-anchored protein at the cell surface requires sorting at multiple intracellular levels. Traffic 3, 547–559 - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances

LinkOut - more resources