To develop effective vaccination strategies against Ehrlichia, we have previously reported developing an animal model of cross-protection in which C57BL/6 mice primed with E. muris were resistant to lethal infection with Ixodes ovatus ehrlichia (IOE). Polyclonal antibody produced in mice after priming with E. muris and later injected with IOE-detected antigenic proteins in E. muris and IOE cell...

The function of palmitoylation will depend on the protein that is being considered. Palmitoylation increases the hydrophobicity of proteins and contributes to their membrane association. Progress has been made in our understanding of protein S-palmitoylation as one of a repertoire of dynamic post-translational protein modifications that can control protein trafficking, localization, partitionin...

Positive selection has been shown to be pervasive in sex-related proteins of many metazoan taxa. However, we are only beginning to understand molecular evolutionary processes on the lineage to humans. To elucidate the evolution of proteins involved in human reproduction, we studied the sequence evolution of MAM domains of the sperm-ligand zonadhesin in respect to single amino acid sites, solven...