Escaping the immune system by DNA repair and recombination in African trypanosomes

Abstract

African trypanosomes escape the mammalian immune response by antigenic variation—the periodic exchange of one surface coat protein, in Trypanosoma brucei the variant surface glycoprotein (VSG), for an immunologically distinct one. VSG transcription is monoallelic, with only one VSG being expressed at a time from a specialized locus, known as an expression site. VSG switching is a predominantly recombination-driven process that allows VSG sequences to be recombined into the active expression site either replacing the currently active VSG or generating a ‘new’ VSG by segmental gene conversion. In this review, we describe what is known about the factors that influence this process, focusing specifically on DNA repair and recombination.