On the role of repeated sequences 5' to variant surface glycoprotein genes in African trypanosomes

In African trypanosomes, the DNA region situated upstream from all active and some silent variant surface glycoprotein genes (VSG genes) has a repetitive structure. This region is composed of a variable number of tandem repeats of an A + T-rich sequence which lacks the recognition sites for most commonly used restriction endonucleases, and is thus called 'barren region'. The length of the barren regions varies in different trypanosome variants from 0.2 to many kb. We have characterized the barren region upstream from the active VSG gene in two independent Trypanosoma equiperdum variants expressing the same VSG gene in the same expression site. To analyse the junction point between the expression site and the inserted gene, these two barren regions were cloned and sequenced. The longer barren region contains 14 repeats and the other contains two repeats. In both cases the junction point has been shown to lie within a repeat but different repeats were used in each case. These results argue that the repeats are important for the insertion of the duplicated-transposed gene into the expression site and that any repeat can be used.