title: Plasmodium vivax: N-terminal diversity in the blood stage SERA genes from Indian isolates.
abstract: Worldwide malaria risk due to Plasmodium vivax makes development of vaccine against P. vivax, a high priority. Serine Repeat Antigen of P. vivax (PvSERA) is a multigene family of blood stage proteins with 12 homologues. Sequence diversity studies are important for understanding them as potential vaccine candidates. No information on N-terminal diversity of these genes is available in literature. In this paper, we evaluate the genetic polymorphism of N-terminal regions of the highly expressed member PvSERA4 and PvSERA5 genes from Indian field isolates. Our results show that PvSERA4 has deletions and insertions in Glutamine rich tetrameric repeat units contributing to its diversity. PvSERA5 also exhibits high genetic diversity with non-synonymous substitutions leading to identification of novel haplotypes from India. Our first report helps in elucidating the allelic variants of PvSERA genes in this region and contributes to evaluating their efficacy as vaccine candidates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Andhra Pradesh, India.
authors.forename: C N
authors.initials: CN
authors.lastname: Rahul
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Andhra Pradesh, India.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Shiva Krishna
authors.affiliation: Sir Ronald Ross Institute of Tropical and Communicable Diseases, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Meera
authors.affiliation: Ehrlich Laboratories, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India.
authors.forename: Sandhya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Phadke
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Andhra Pradesh, India. Electronic address: vidya_nrajesh@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Vidya
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Rajesh
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000953:Antigens, Protozoan / Q000235:genetics*; D004912:Erythrocytes / Q000469:parasitology; D005091:Exons; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D007194:India / Q000453:epidemiology; D007438:Introns; D016780:Malaria, Vivax / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000469:parasitology; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D010966:Plasmodium vivax / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D020449:Repetitive Sequences, Amino Acid; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D000953:Antigens, Protozoan; C057495:serine repeat antigen, Plasmodium
keywords: Haplotype; India; P. vivax; SERA; Vaccine