Plasmodium falciparum: an intervening sequence in the GBP 130/96 tR gene

The 96 tR antigen is a heat stable protein produced during the late stages of the intraerythrocytic development of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and is released into the culture supernatant or the sera of infected patients at the time of schizont rupture. This antigen, identified as a putative protective antigen, was shown to be identical to the glycophorin-binding protein GBP 130 (Perkins 1988, Bonnefoy et al. 1988). We report here that the gene contains a small undescribed intervening sequence located immediately after the sequence coding for the signal sequence. This shows that in P. falciparum, all the genes described so far coding for proteins exported outside the parasitophorous vacuole share a common organization.