Journal
TRENDS IN GENETICS
Volume 22, Issue 11, Pages 614-620Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE LONDON
DOI: 10.1016/j.tig.2006.08.003
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Funding
- Wellcome Trust [095161] Funding Source: Medline
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The African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei is best known for its extraordinarily sophisticated antigenic variation of a protective variant surface glycoprotein (VSG) coat. T. brucei has > 1000 VSG genes and pseudogenes, of which one is transcribed at a time from one of multiple telomeric VSG expression sites. Switching the active VSG gene can involve DNA rearrangements replacing the old VSG with a new one, or alternatively transcriptional control. The astonishing revelation from the T. brucei genome sequence is that < 7% of the sequenced VSGs seem to have fully functional coding regions. This preponderance of pseudogenes in the VSG gene repertoire will necessitate a rethink of how antigenic variation in African trypanosomes operates.
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