Fig 1.
Life cycle of Leishmania spp. demonstrating specifically the log and stationary phase of the promastigotes in the gut of the sandfly.
Accordingly, the infected sand fly inoculates the stationary phase promastigotes into the skin and the promastigotes are phagocytosed by the macrophages of the vertebrate host. Then, the promastigotes rapidly transform into amastigotes and continue to grow and multiply. When another sand fly sucks blood from an infected host, the amastigote-containing macrophages are transferred and in the sandfly’s midgut the amastigotes are transformed into rapidly dividing log phase promastigotes. In the gut of the sandfly, initially promastigotes rapidly divide which are called logarithmic phase promastigotes (log phase promastigotes) and they have low infectivity. Then, in the gut of the sandfly, promastigotes become non-dividing but more virulent which are called stationary phase promastigotes and ready to infect the host by sandfly bite. Microsoft Office PowerPoint and Paint were used only as a tool during the drawing of the figure and Phlebotomus image was obtained from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phlebotomus_(01).png.
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Table 1.
BLAST results of GP63 proteins of L. infantum, L. major, and L. tropica samples.
Table 2.
Variation analysis performed for L. infantum samples using reference GP63 protein (XM_001463664.2).
Table 3.
Variation analysis performed for L. major samples using reference GP63 protein (XM_001681327.1).
Table 4.
Variation analysis performed for L. tropica samples using reference GP63 protein (CM024296.1).
Table 5.
Physico-chemical parameters of selected GP63 proteins.
Table 6.
Antigenicity, allergenicity, post-translational modification predictions of selected GP63 proteins.
Table 7.
B cell epitope predictions in selected GP63 proteins.
Table 8.
MHC-I epitope predictions in selected GP63 proteins of L. infantum.
Table 9.
MHC-I epitope predictions in selected GP63 protein of L. major.
Table 10.
MHC-II epitope predictions in selected GP63 proteins of L. infantum.
Table 11.
MHC-II epitope predictions in selected GP63 proteins of L. major.
Table 12.
MHC-II epitope predictions in selected GP63 proteins of L. tropica.
Fig 2.
Docking results of selected MHC-I/II epitopes.
Fig 3.
3D structures of selected GRP63 proteins, showing epitopes selected and docked with BCR or MHC-I/II alleles.
Table 13.
Primers used for amplification and sequencing of selected GR63 gene intron regions of Leishmania spp.
Table 14.
Bioinformatics analyses tools used to analyze GP63 protein and its epitopes.