The polypeptide profiles of strains of the Trypanosoma subgenera Schizotrypanum and Trypanozoon: peptideme characterization.
Examination, by SDS-PAGE, of the polypeptide profiles of 36 Brazilian strains of Trypanosoma (Schizotrypanum) cruzi has revealed five peptidemes (subpopulations having similar polypeptide profiles) recognizing differences not apparent from zymodeme analysis. T. cruzi zymodeme (Z)1 has been subdivided into peptidemes 3, 4 and 5 (one example of Z2 was included in peptideme 5). Peptideme 1 consisted mostly of Z2 strains except for one example each of Z1 and Z3. One strain of Z2 (Tc 003) was sufficiently dissimilar to merit separation into peptideme 2. Peptideme characterization was not possible with the Trypanozoon trypanosomes since there were no significant differences in the polypeptide profiles of 56 strains from Africa and South America; their profiles could only be compared in the molecular weight ranges 94,000 to 70,000 and below 36,000 because of distortion resulting from the variant specific surface glycoproteins. It was possible to differentiate between eight VATs of T. (Trypanozoon) brucei (BruTat 2 to 9) by isoelectric focusing of their soluble proteins.