Trypanosoma cruzi and human ubiquitin are immunologically distinct proteins despite only three amino acid difference in their primary sequence

The high similarity between Trypanosoma cruzi and human ubiquitin prompted us to characterize the human humoral immunity to host and parasite ubiquitin in Chagas disease and its possible role in Chagas autoimmunity. We have used a simplified one step purification procedure to partially purify T. cruzi ubiquitin. Using this preparation we have performed ELISA and Western blots, to show that chagasic sera recognise T. cruzi but not human or Leishmania ubiquitin indicating a species-specific response. Our results show that despite the high degree of similarity in the primary structure of human and T. cruzi ubiquitins, the three amino acid difference is sufficient to distinguish parasite versus host proteins.