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Updated: Jul 25, 2025
Detection of Plasmodium Sporozoites in Anopheles Mosquitoes using an Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay
Published on: September 30, 2021
Plasmodium knowlesi circumsporozoite protein: genetic characterisation and predicted antigenicity of the central
J H Tan1, F W Cheong1, Y L Lau1
1Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Abstract:
Circumsporozoite protein (CSP) central repeat region is one of the main target regions of the RTS,S/AS01 vaccine for falciparum infection as it consists of immunodominant B cell epitopes. However, there is a lack of study for P. knowlesi CSP central repeat region. This study aims to characterise the CSP repeat motifs of P. knowlesi isolates in Peninsular Malaysia. CSP repeat motifs of 64 P. knowlesi isolates were identified using Rapid Automatic Detection and Alignment of Repeats (RADAR). Antigenicity of the repeat motifs and linear B cell epitopes were predicted using VaxiJen 2.0, BepiPred-2.0 and BCPred, respectively. A total of 35 dominant repeat motifs were identified. The repeat motif "AGQPQAQGDGANAGQPQAQGDGAN" has the highest repeat frequency (n=15) and antigenicity index of 1.7986. All the repeat regions were predicted as B cell epitopes. In silico approaches revealed that all repeat motifs were antigenic and consisted of B cell epitopes which could be designed as knowlesi malaria vaccine.
