Fungal antigenic variation using mosaicism and reassortment of subtelomeric genes' repertoires.

ABSTRACT: Surface antigenic variation is crucial for major pathogens that infect humans. To escape the immune system, they exploit various mechanisms. Understanding these mechanisms is important to better prevent and fight the deadly diseases caused. Those used by the fungus Pneumocystis jirovecii that causes life-threatening pneumonia in immunocompromised individuals remain poorly understood. Here, though this fungus is currently not cultivable, our detailed analysis of the subtelomeric sequence motifs and genes encoding surface proteins suggests that the system involves the reassortment of the repertoire of ca. 80 non-expressed genes present in each strain, from which single genes are retrieved for mutually exclusive expression. Dispersion of the new repertoires, supposedly by healthy carrier indi

SUBMITTER: Meier CS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10622565 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature