Figure 1

Location of sequence divergence and solvent accessibility in the primary and tertiary structure of VSG type A N-terminal domains. (a) The tertiary structure of a VSG N-terminal domain dimer with the tertiary structure features coloured in one monomer. The N-terminus is in yellow, the descending alpha helix of the long coiled coil is purple and the ascending helix blue; the surface loops at the top of the VSG are in green. (b) The colours are then used to highlight the same regions in the primary structure in plots of sequence variation (top) between VSG Buteba 4 and homologues from T. b. brucei and T. b. gambiense and below is shown the calculated solvent accessibility for the structurally related VSG MITat1.2.