Conserved alanine rich protein Rv3878 in Mycobacterium tuberculosis contains sequence polymorphisms

Host immune pressure and associated parasite immune evasion are key features of host-pathogen co-evolution. A previous study showed that human T cell epitopes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis are evolutionarily hyperconserved and thus it was deduced that M. tuberculosis lacks antigenic variation and immune evasion. Here, we selected 162 clinical M. tuberculosis complex (MTBC) isolates from China, amplified gene encoding Rv3878 and compared the sequences. The results showed that Rv3878, a conserved hypothetical alanine rich protein, is not conserved in M. tuberculosis strains and there are polymorphisms existing in the protein. The large number of amino acid changes in its T cell epitopes may reflect ongoing immune evasion.