Structural and Immunological Similarities Between the Metacyclic and Bloodstream Form Variant Surface Glycoproteins of the African Trypanosome

Abstract

During infection of mammalian hosts, African trypanosomes thwart immunity using antigenic variation of the dense Variant Surface Glycoprotein (VSG) coat, accessing a large repertoire of thousands of genes and pseudogenes and switching to antigenically distinct copies. The parasite is transferred to mammalian hosts through the bite of the tsetse fly. In the salivary glands of the fly, the pathogen adopts the metacyclic form and expresses a limited repertoire of VSG genes specific to that developmental stage. It has remained unknown whether the metacyclic VSGs possess distinct properties associated with this particular and discrete phase of the parasite life cycle. We show here using bioinformatic, crystallographic, and immunological analyses of three metacyclic VSGs that they closely mirror the known classes of bloodstream form VSGs both in structure and in the immunological responses they elicit.