title: Aspartic proteases of Plasmodium vivax are highly conserved in wild isolates.
abstract: The plasmepsins are the aspartic proteases of malaria parasites. Treatment of aspartic protease inhibitor inhibits hemoglobin hydrolysis and blocks the parasite development in vitro suggesting that these proteases might be exploited their potentials as antimalarial drug targets. In this study, we determined the genetic variations of the aspartic proteases of Plasmodium vivax (PvPMs) of wild isolates. Two plasmepsins (PvPM4 and PvPM5) were cloned and sequenced from 20 P. vivax Korean isolates and two imported isolates. The sequences of the enzymes were highly conserved except a small number of amino acid substitutions did not modify key residues for the function or the structure of the enzymes. The high sequence conservations between the plasmepsins from the isolates support the notion that the enzymes could be reliable targets for new antimalarial chemotherapeutics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Parasitology and Center for Molecular Medicine, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine and Samsung Biomedical Research Institute, Suwon 440-746, Korea. nihkim@nih.go.kr
authors.forename: Byoung-Kuk
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Na
authors.forename: Eung-Goo
authors.initials: EG
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Hyeong-Woo
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Shin-Hyeong
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Young-An
authors.initials: YA
authors.lastname: Bae
authors.forename: Yoon
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.forename: Jong-Koo
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.forename: Tong-Soo
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Kim
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D016282:Aspartic Acid Endopeptidases / Q000235:genetics*; D001483:Base Sequence; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D016054:DNA, Protozoan / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010966:Plasmodium vivax / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000302:isolation & purification; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D016054:DNA, Protozoan; D016282:Aspartic Acid Endopeptidases