Abstract:
Apical membrane antigen 1 (AMA-1) of Plasmodium falciparum is a merozoite protein localized to the apical complex and transported to the merozoite surface during schizont maturation. Several lines of evidences from in vitro and in vivo studies have suggested that AMA-1 is a promising candidate for malaria vaccine. Although sequence analysis has revealed that AMA-1 lacks apparent repeats, nucleotide substitutions have been frequently indentified among isolates. Importantly, clusters of nucleotide substitutions are found in domain I where a number of T-cell epitopes have been mapped. To gain insights into natural variation in these T-cell-epitope-encoding regions among Thai isolates, 100 P. falciparum-infected patients in Tak province were recruited in this study. The AMA-1 gene fragment, spanning 435 base pairs, from each isolate was amplified by the polymerase chain reaction, followed by direct sequencing. Results revealed that 19 distinct alleles were detected in this population, 16 of which were newly indentified in this analysis. In total, 25 substituted nucleotides occurred, 10 of which were transitional changes. It is of note that all of these substitutions resulted in amino acid altering. Furthermore, the majority of substituted codon (80%) created radical amino acid replacements in terms of polarity and acid-base property. Consequently, the T-cell epitopes mapped in this region exhibited sequence variation ranging from 2 to 9 sequence types. Comparison with the AMA-1 sequences from diverse geographic origins has shown that a limited sequence variation occurred in 3 epitopes while 2 epitopes displayed extensive sequence polymorphism, containing 13 and 23 sequence types. Therefore, a rational design of an AMA-1-based vaccine should take into account the variation among natural P. falciparum populations.