The relative significance of mechanisms of antigenic variation in African trypanosomes

The large number of genes involved in antigenic variation in African trypanosomes has been the focus of a wide literature that describes an almost bewildering array of mechanisms for their differential activation. To the outsider searching for an underlying strategy for antigenic variation, this can appear as a rather disordered and confusing picture. Here, David Barry argues that all understanding of which mechanisms are significant, which ones are primarily inconsequential and which ones perhaps even arise arise from overdependence on laboratory models, might be achieved by turning attention to trypanosomes that have not undergone adaptation in laboratory conditions. Application of such an approach has led to a proposal for a main mechanism for antigenic variation.