title: Correlation between antigenicity and variability in the vls antigenic variation system of Borrelia burgdorferi.
abstract: Many parasites have evolved antigenic variation systems that alter surface proteins in order to evade recognition by presently expressed antibodies and subsequent death. Although the amino acid positions in antigens to which antibodies most commonly target are expected to be the most variable, this assumption has not been investigated. Using the vls antigenic variation system of Borrelia burgdorferi as a model, we first investigated this assumption computationally and then developed a sensitive immunoassay to experimentally validate the computational results. There was a strong correlation between variability at an amino acid position and each of the computational metrics associated with antibody reactivity. However, empirical measures of antibody reactivity were not consistently greater at the variable amino acid positions than at the invariant amino acid positions. The inconsistent experimental support for this hypothesis suggests that the biological effect of variability at an amino acid position is obfuscated by other factors.
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, 3451 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States. Electronic address: zhouwei2@sas.upenn.edu.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: University of Pennsylvania, 3451 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States.
authors.forename: Dustin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brisson
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000907:Antibodies, Bacterial / Q000276:immunology; D000940:Antigenic Variation / Q000276:immunology*; D000942:Antigens, Bacterial / Q000276:immunology*; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000276:immunology*; D025065:Borrelia burgdorferi / Q000276:immunology*; D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray; D007118:Immunoassay / Q000379:methods*; D008074:Lipoproteins / Q000276:immunology*; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary
chemical_list: D000907:Antibodies, Bacterial; D000942:Antigens, Bacterial; D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D008074:Lipoproteins; C105546:VlsE protein, Borrelia burgdorferi
keywords: Antigenic variation; Borrelia burgdorferi; Epitope mapping; VlsE