Cargando…
Unravelling var complexity: Relationship between DBLα types and var genes in Plasmodium falciparum
The enormous diversity and complexity of var genes that diversify rapidly by recombination has led to the exclusion of assembly of these genes from major genome initiatives (e.g., Pf6). A scalable solution in epidemiological surveillance of var genes is to use a small ‘tag’ region encoding the immun...
Autores principales: | , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
2022
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10060044/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36998722 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpara.2022.1006341 |
_version_ | 1785017024146046976 |
---|---|
author | Tan, Mun Hua Shim, Heejung Chan, Yao-ban Day, Karen P. |
author_facet | Tan, Mun Hua Shim, Heejung Chan, Yao-ban Day, Karen P. |
author_sort | Tan, Mun Hua |
collection | PubMed |
description | The enormous diversity and complexity of var genes that diversify rapidly by recombination has led to the exclusion of assembly of these genes from major genome initiatives (e.g., Pf6). A scalable solution in epidemiological surveillance of var genes is to use a small ‘tag’ region encoding the immunogenic DBLα domain as a marker to estimate var diversity. As var genes diversify by recombination, it is not clear the extent to which the same tag can appear in multiple var genes. This relationship between marker and gene has not been investigated in natural populations. Analyses of in vitro recombination within and between var genes have suggested that this relationship would not be exclusive. Using a dataset of publicly-available assembled var sequences, we test this hypothesis by studying DBLα-var relationships for four study sites in four countries: Pursat (Cambodia) and Mae Sot (Thailand), representing low malaria transmission, and Navrongo (Ghana) and Chikwawa (Malawi), representing high malaria transmission. In all study sites, DBLα-var relationships were shown to be predominantly 1-to-1, followed by a second largest proportion of 1-to-2 DBLα-var relationships. This finding indicates that DBLα tags can be used to estimate not just DBLα diversity but var gene diversity when applied in a local endemic area. Epidemiological applications of this result are discussed. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10060044 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-100600442023-03-29 Unravelling var complexity: Relationship between DBLα types and var genes in Plasmodium falciparum Tan, Mun Hua Shim, Heejung Chan, Yao-ban Day, Karen P. Front Parasitol Article The enormous diversity and complexity of var genes that diversify rapidly by recombination has led to the exclusion of assembly of these genes from major genome initiatives (e.g., Pf6). A scalable solution in epidemiological surveillance of var genes is to use a small ‘tag’ region encoding the immunogenic DBLα domain as a marker to estimate var diversity. As var genes diversify by recombination, it is not clear the extent to which the same tag can appear in multiple var genes. This relationship between marker and gene has not been investigated in natural populations. Analyses of in vitro recombination within and between var genes have suggested that this relationship would not be exclusive. Using a dataset of publicly-available assembled var sequences, we test this hypothesis by studying DBLα-var relationships for four study sites in four countries: Pursat (Cambodia) and Mae Sot (Thailand), representing low malaria transmission, and Navrongo (Ghana) and Chikwawa (Malawi), representing high malaria transmission. In all study sites, DBLα-var relationships were shown to be predominantly 1-to-1, followed by a second largest proportion of 1-to-2 DBLα-var relationships. This finding indicates that DBLα tags can be used to estimate not just DBLα diversity but var gene diversity when applied in a local endemic area. Epidemiological applications of this result are discussed. 2022 2023-01-09 /pmc/articles/PMC10060044/ /pubmed/36998722 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpara.2022.1006341 Text en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Article Tan, Mun Hua Shim, Heejung Chan, Yao-ban Day, Karen P. Unravelling var complexity: Relationship between DBLα types and var genes in Plasmodium falciparum |
title | Unravelling var complexity: Relationship between DBLα types and var genes in Plasmodium falciparum |
title_full | Unravelling var complexity: Relationship between DBLα types and var genes in Plasmodium falciparum |
title_fullStr | Unravelling var complexity: Relationship between DBLα types and var genes in Plasmodium falciparum |
title_full_unstemmed | Unravelling var complexity: Relationship between DBLα types and var genes in Plasmodium falciparum |
title_short | Unravelling var complexity: Relationship between DBLα types and var genes in Plasmodium falciparum |
title_sort | unravelling var complexity: relationship between dblα types and var genes in plasmodium falciparum |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10060044/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36998722 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpara.2022.1006341 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT tanmunhua unravellingvarcomplexityrelationshipbetweendblatypesandvargenesinplasmodiumfalciparum AT shimheejung unravellingvarcomplexityrelationshipbetweendblatypesandvargenesinplasmodiumfalciparum AT chanyaoban unravellingvarcomplexityrelationshipbetweendblatypesandvargenesinplasmodiumfalciparum AT daykarenp unravellingvarcomplexityrelationshipbetweendblatypesandvargenesinplasmodiumfalciparum |