Antigenic cartography of immune responses to Recombinant DBLα tags from Plasmodium falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1).. Antigenic cartography of immune responses to Recombinant DBLα tags from Plasmodium falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1).

Naturally acquired clinical immunity to Plasmodium falciparum is thought to be partly mediated by antibodies directed at parasite derived antigens on the surface of red blood cells infected with mature forms of P. falciparum called variant surface antigens (VSAs). Of these, P. falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1) is well characterized and associated with pathology and immune evasion. Immune adult sera exhibit recognition of a wide range of VSAs, unlike sera from children which show recognition to a limited subset of the VSAs. It is not yet clear whether acquisition of broad recognition of VSAs is exclusively a product of variant specific responses accumulated over many exposures or whether it arises as a result of cross-reactive responses that recognize diverse sets of antigen. We used the recombinant DBLa-tag region of PfEMP1 generated from parasites isolated from children infected with malaria and a statistical method to describe antigenic diversity