antigen diversity in the parasitic bacterium anaplasma phagocytophilum arises from selectively-represented, spatially clustered functional pseudogenes抗原多样性的寄生细菌红孢子虫属phagocytophilum起源于selectively-represented,空间集群功能的假基因.pdfVIP

Antigen Diversity in the Parasitic Bacterium Anaplasma phagocytophilum Arises from Selectively-Represented, Spatially Clustered Functional Pseudogenes 1 1 2 3 Janet E. Foley *, Nathan C. Nieto , Anthony Barbet , Patrick Foley 1 Department of Medicine and Epidemiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, California, United States of America, 2 Department of Pathobiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of America, 3 Department of Biological Sciences, California State University, Sacramento, California, United States of America Abstract Anaplasma phagocytophilum is a tick-transmitted bacterial pathogen of humans and other animals, and is an obligate intracellular parasite. Throughout the course of infection, hosts acquire temporary resistance to granulocytic anaplasmosis as they develop immunity specific for the major antigen, major surface protein 2 (Msp2). However, the bacterium then utilizes a novel recombination mechanism shuffling functional pseudogenes sequentially into an expression cassette with conserved 59 and 39 ends, bypassing host immunity. Approximately 100 pseudogenes are present in the only fully sequenced human-origin HZ genome, representing the possibility for almost unlimited antigenic diversity. In the present study, we identified a select group of 20% of the A. phagocytophilum HZ msp2 pseudogenes that have matched preferentially to human, canine, and equine expression cassettes. Pseudogenes cluster predominantly in one spatial run limited to a single genomic island in less than 50% of the genome but phylogenetically related pseudogenes are neither necessarily located