title: Sequence conservation of glycerophosphodiester phosphodiesterase among Treponema pallidum strains.
abstract: Previous investigations have demonstrated that immunization with Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum glycerophosphodiester phosphodiesterase significantly protects rabbits from subsequent treponeme challenge. In this report, we show that the glycerophosphodiester phosphodiesterase amino acid sequence is conserved among 12 strains from a total of five pathogenic treponemes. The invariant nature of this immunoprotective antigen makes it an attractive candidate for inclusion in a universal subunit vaccine against T. pallidum infection. In addition, these studies show a silent nucleotide substitution at position 579 of the gpd open reading frame which is consistently observed in the non-T. pallidum subsp. pallidum strains. This sequence alteration introduces a PleI restriction site in the nonsyphilis strains and thus allows genetic differentiation from T. pallidum subsp. pallidum strains.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: C E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Cameron
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Castro
authors.forename: S A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Lukehart
authors.forename: W C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Van Voorhis
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D005784:Gene Amplification; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010727:Phosphoric Diester Hydrolases / Q000235:genetics*; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D012150:Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length; D011817:Rabbits; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D014210:Treponema pallidum / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D010727:Phosphoric Diester Hydrolases; C038133:glycerophosphodiester phosphodiesterase