Antigenic variation in Plasmodium falciparum malaria involves a highly structured switching pattern.

ABSTRACT: Many pathogenic bacteria, fungi, and protozoa achieve chronic infection through an immune evasion strategy known as antigenic variation. In the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, this involves transcriptional switching among members of the var gene family, causing parasites with different antigenic and phenotypic characteristics to appear at different times within a population. Here we use a genome-wide approach to explore this process in vitro within a set of cloned parasite populations. Our analyses reveal a non-random, highly structured switch pathway where an initially dominant transcript switches via a set of switch-intermediates either to a new dominant transcript, or back to the original. We show that this specific pathway can arise through an evolutionary conflict in whi

SUBMITTER: Recker M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3048365 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature