Sequence and preliminary characterisation of a Taenia saginata oncosphere gene homologue of the small heat-shock protein family.

During antibody screening of a Taenia saginata oncosphere cDNA library a clone (R-Tso2) sharing a high degree of homology at both the DNA and amino acid levels with the small heat-shock protein (shsp) family was identified. The R-Tso2 clone was a full-length sequence (1162 bp) with an open reading frame of 945 bp and 314 amino acids, corresponding to a deduced molecular mass of 35.6 kDa and isoelectric point of 5.6. R-Tso2 had the highest degree of homology with the Schistosoma mansoni major egg antigens, showing the characteristic shsp 100 amino-acid sequence motif duplicated. The R-Tso2 expression product was not immuno-precipitated by any serum from a panel of serum samples obtained from bovine, porcine and human hosts suffering from either T. saginata or T. solium cysticercosis.