Genetic variation in the sand fly salivary protein, SP‐15, a potential vaccine candidate against Leishmania major

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Abstract
SP‐15 is a sandfly salivary protein that provides strong protection against cutaneous leishmaniasis, caused by Leishmania major, and has been proposed as a potential vaccine against this disease. To investigate possible antigenic variation in this protein, we examined genetic polymorphism of SP‐15 in 100 Phlebotomus papatasi sandflies, from a natural population from Sudan and four laboratory colonies from Egypt, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. We found that although many variants of SP‐15 may be found in nature, differences among them are minimal (mean ± SD pairwise differences = 1.69 ± 0.83% for forty nucleotide sequences and 3.06 ± 1.13% for thirty amino acid sequence variants). Analysis of proportions of synonymous and non‐synonymous substitutions indicated that SP‐15 is not under diversifying selection. Our results suggest that a vaccine based on SP‐15 protein should result in a uniform immune response.

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