Abstract
The parasites that cause African sleeping sickness survive by being capricious: In the course of a single infection, a population of Trypanosoma brucei gambiense or rhodesiense can change protein coats at least 100 times, thus always keeping ahead of the antibody response. Genetic research from the Netherlands suggests that this capacity, in an organism that causes such suffering in Africa, may be one of the most vivid examples in nature of the importance of movable genetic elements. The clinical implication is that it will not prove possible to prevent this disease by vaccination. By cloning individual trypanosomes in irradiated mice that had a delayed antibody response, George Cross, PhD, director, Laboratory of Molecular Parasitology, Rockefeller University, New York City, was able in 1975 to isolate a surface component of the trypanosome that antibodies recognized: a glycoprotein. However, antibodies are never able to eradicate the parasites completely, and the symptoms of
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