Figure 1.

Schematic of A4tres and A4var PfEMP1 domain organization and expression constructs. The entire extracellular region of PfEMP1, including a putative transmembrane domain, is encoded in exon 1. The intron and exon 2 (partially sequenced for each PfEMP1) are labeled. Recombinant PfEMP1 proteins expressed in Cos-7 cells are shown beneath the protein schematics with domain boundaries listed. The A4var DBLβC2 was synthesized and tested for ICAM-1 binding in this paper. Previously, other A4var PfEMP1 recombinant proteins that covered the whole extracellular domain were tested for ICAM-1 binding (21).