A Plasmodium chabaudi antigen located in the parasitophorous vacuole membrane

In order to study antigens from the rodent malaria Plasmodium chabaudi, clones reacting with mouse hyperimmune serum were selected from an expression library of blood-stage P. chabaudi cDNAs in the vector pGEX-2T. Sixty-four such clones were shown to derive from 19 different P. chabaudi antigens. One of these, Antigen 3008 (Ag3008), has a predicted size of 17.5 kDa and an observed size of 24 kDa. It is located in the parasitophorous vacuole membrane of maturing parasites and in the dense granules of merozoites. The cDNA sequence predicts a highly charged molecule with an N-terminal signal sequence and a central transmembrane domain, but no tandem repeats. The sequence reported for Pc24, a previously identified but uncharacterized P. chabaudi protein, corresponds to part of the 3' untranslated region in the Ag3008 mRNA. Ag3008 has many features in common with the P. falciparum circumsporozoite protein-related antigen (CRA).