Ae. Wallis et al., LEISHMANIA-MAJOR - ORGANIZATION AND CONSERVATION OF GENES ENCODING REPETITIVE PEPTIDES AND SUBCELLULAR-LOCALIZATION OF THE CORRESPONDING PROTEINS, Experimental parasitology, 78(2), 1994, pp. 161-174
Proteins containing tandemly repeating peptide sequences are character
istic of several parasite antigens. Previously it was reported that Le
ishmania major contain two genes, Lm20 and Lm39, consisting of two unr
elated repeat sequences of 42 and 30 base pairs (bp), respectively. In
present study L. major was shown to contain two genes that contained
the Lm20 42-BP repeat sequence and that the 42-BP repeat sequence was
highly conserved among both Old and New World Leishmania species. The
two L. major genes varied in the number of 42-BP tandem repeat sequenc
es with Lm20.1 containing over 100 repeat units while Lm20.2 contained
only 8 repeat units. Furthermore, these two L. major genes were disti
nct with respect to the nonrepetitive sequence. The unrelated Lm39 30
BP tandem repeat was also shown to be highly conserved among Leishmani
a species. The subcellular localization of the proteins encoded by Lm2
0 42-BP repeat and the Lm39 30-BP repeat were determined by immunoelec
tron microscopy. Antibodies raised against synthetic peptides correspo
nding to the Lm39 30-BP repeat sequence reacted with proteins that loc
alized to the endoplasmic reticulum and membraneous structures within
the promastigote cytoplasm. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.