Figure 2

Sequence alignment over a particularly polymorphic region of ESAG6 shows that T. b. gambiense ESAG6 types are significantly less diverse over the hypervariable region than ESAG6 sequences from T. b. brucei and T. equiperdum . The ESAG6 protein sequence types as listed in Tables 1-3 are indicated on the left with amino acid residue position above. The ESAG6 hypervariable region (HV) as described in [38, 40] as well as boxes I and II of the ESAG6 transferrin binding site (Tf binding) as described in [39] are indicated with red boxes. Residues that are the most dissimilar to the consensus within a given trypanosome subspecies are highlighted in white. Residues that are completely conserved within a given subspecies are indicated in dark blue, while residues with intermediate degrees of sequence conservation are highlighted with intermediate shades of blue.