Mass spectrometric analysis of the Schistosoma mansoni tegumental sub-proteome

Schistosoma mansoni is a parasitic worm that lives in the blood vessels of its host. We mapped the S. mansoni tegumental outer-surface structure proteome by 1D SDS-PAGE and LC-MS/MS and an EST-database from the ongoing genome-sequencing project. We identified 740 proteins of which 43 were tegument-specific. Many of these proteins show no homology to any nonschistosomal protein, demonstrating that the schistosomal outer-surface comprises specific and unique proteins, likely to be critical for parasite survival.