Fig 4.

Deletion of the Asn/Asp-rich domain does not alter T cell epitope usage or immunogenicity of rPfMSP8. Splenocytes from mice immunized with rPfMSP8 (A) or rPfMSP8(ΔAsn/Asp) (B) were stimulated with 15 μg/ml of overlapping synthetic peptides that spanned the entire length of the rPfMSP8. T cell proliferation was quantitated as described above. Splenocytes from mice immunized with adjuvant alone were used as negative controls. Numbers on the x axis depict individual peptides (see Table S1 in the supplemental material) and are aligned with a schematic of recombinant PfMSP8 at the bottom of the figure to show peptide positions within the coding sequence.