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Infection and Immunity, November 2000, p. 6482-6486, Vol. 68, No. 11
0019-9567/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

The Sequence-Variable, Single-Copy tprK Gene of Treponema pallidum Nichols Strain UNC and Street Strain 14 Encodes Heterogeneous TprK Proteins

Lola V. Stamm* and Heather L. Bergen

Program in Infectious Diseases, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7400

Received 17 May 2000/Returned for modification 24 July 2000/Accepted 18 August 2000

Syphilis is a chronic infection with early relapses that are hypothesized to result from the emergence of phenotypic variants of Treponema pallidum. Recent studies demonstrated that TprK, a target of protective immunity, is heterogeneous in several T. pallidum strains, but not in Nichols strain Seattle (A. Centurion-Lara, C. Godornes, C. Castro, W. C. Van Voorhis, and S. A. Lukehart, Infect. Immun. 68:824-831, 2000). Analysis of PCR-amplified tprK from Nichols strain UNC and Street strain 14 treponemes showed that TprK has seven regions of intrastrain heterogeneity resulting from amino acid substitutions, insertions, and deletions. In contrast, analysis of PCR-amplified tprJ showed little intrastrain or interstrain heterogeneity. Reverse transcriptase PCR analysis demonstrated that mRNA transcripts representing unique polymorphic TprK proteins are present during syphilitic infection. Southern hybridization confirmed that Nichols strain UNC and Street strain 14 each contain a single copy of tprK, indicating that intrastrain heterogeneity is due to the presence of multiple treponemal subpopulations which contain a variant form of tprK.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Program in Infectious Diseases, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7400. Phone: (919) 966-3882. Fax: (919) 966-2089. E-mail: lstamm{at}emailunc.edu.

Infection and Immunity, November 2000, p. 6482-6486, Vol. 68, No. 11
0019-9567/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.


This article has been cited by other articles:

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