Major Immunogen in 'Schistosoma mansoni' Infections is Homologous to the Heat Shock Protein Hsp70

摘要

Schistosomes induce an immune response characterized by antibodies that recognize a complex spectrum of parasite antigens, a few being invariably immunogenic in all hosts (1), One of these, an antigen of 70,000 mol wt, is immunodominant both in humans naturally infected with Schistosoma mansoni and in other mammals infected under experimental conditions (1,2). lambda gt11 expression. Libraries were screened with various infection sera and several antigen - expressing clones were isolated (1). In this report, clones expressing fusion peptides that specifically adsorbed antibodies capable of immunoprecipitating the 70,000 mol wt antigen from in vitro RNA translation products of from schistosome extracts were used for DNA sequence homology with human and Drosophila hsp70, the s. mansoni homologue is sufficiently divergent to elicit a strong and noncrossreactive immune response to this antigen. Schistosome development alternates between temperature extremes in its transition between the snail and vertebrate hosts, suggesting a potential regulatory role of this major immunogen in parasite development and pathogensis. (Author)