A. Esteves et al., REMARKS ON THE PHYLOGENY AND STRUCTURE OF FATTY-ACID-BINDING PROTEINSFROM PARASITIC PLATYHELMINTHS, International journal for parasitology, 27(9), 1997, pp. 1013-1023
Four fatty acid binding proteins (FABPs) have been described in 4 para
sitic platyhelminths: Schistosoma mansoni, Schistosoma japonicum, Fasc
iola hepatica and Echinococcus granulosus. FABPs form a multigenic fam
ily of cytosolic proteins widely distributed in metazoan tissues, the
function of which is still poorly understood. These helminth proteins
have recently received attention, since there are reports to indicate
that S. mansoni and F. hepatica FABPs may be protective antigens. In a
ddition, these proteins could play a major role in the parasites' life
-cycles because platyhelminths are unable to synthesize de novo most o
f their lipids, We have undertaken phylogenetic and structural analyse
s of platyhelminth FABPs in an attempt to characterize features of bio
logical relevance. Phylogenetically, these FABPs appear to be more clo
sely related to those of vertebrate heart, mammary gland, muscle, reti
na, skin, brain and myelin, although no clear functional relationships
mere established between them, We describe several conserved motifs c
haracteristic of specific groups of FABPs. Hydrophilicity, flexibility
and accessibility analyses revealed several major putative epitopes f
or the E. granulosus FABP, EgDf1, that appear to be centred in loops o
f the EgDf1 3-dimensional structure modelled by molecular replacement.
(C) 1997 Australian Society for Parasitology. Published by Elsevier S
cience Ltd.