Quantitative proteomic analysis of Giardia duodenalis assemblage A: A baseline for host, assemblage, and isolate variation

Giardia duodenalis is a gastrointestinal protozoan parasite of vertebrates and is a species complex comprised of eight assemblages, with the zoonotic assemblage A one of two subtypes infective for humans. With increasing genomic and transcriptomic data publicly available through the centralized giardiaDB.org, we have quantitatively analyzed the proteomes of eight G. duodenalis assemblage A strains (seven A1 and one A2) to provide a proteomic baseline to complement the available data. A nonredundant total of 1197 subassemblage A1 proteins and 719 subassemblage A2 proteins were identified with an average of 770 proteins in each strain. The eight strains were also searched against both assemblage A genome sequences (subassemblage A1 and A2 genomes) and demonstrated subassemblage specific differences in protein identifications, especially for variable gene families. Substantial differences were observed in the numbers and abundance in the variable surface protein family, and two different variable surface protein expression profiles that were independent of host origin, subassemblage, or geographic origin. We hypothesize that this variation in surface antigen switching events may be related to karotype and chromosomal variation, which would indicate an assemblage-independent mechanism of diversity generation in G. duodenalis. All MS data have been deposited in the ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD001272 (http://proteomecentral.proteomexchange.org/dataset/PXD001272).