QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE CHANGES IN PRODUCTION OF EXCRETIONS SECRETIONS BY LITOMOSOIDES-CARINII DURING DEVELOPMENT IN THE JIRD (MERIONES-UNGUICULATUS)

Excretions and secretions (E .fwdarw. S) were collected from a series of developmental stages of Litomosoides carinii maintained in vitro. Measurement of the protein content of E .fwdarw. S obtained from each stage indicates that the rate of production of E .fwdarw. S varied enormously during development of the worm. E .fwdarw. S was iodinated using both Iodogen and the Bolton and Hunter Reagent and was also biosynthetically labelled by incubating worms in the presence of [35S]methionine and [3H]leucine. Attempts to biosynthetically label E .fwdarw. S of mature worms and microfilariae with [3H]glucose were unsuccessful. Examination of radio-isotope labelled E .fwdarw. S by SDS .fwdarw. PAGE revealed that some components were sex specific and that the differences in total E .fwdarw. S production during development were due to the existence of both stage-specific components and components whose rate of release varied during parasite maturation. Antigenic characterization of E .fwdarw. S, carried out by immunoprecipitation in combination with SDS-PAGE, indicated that E .fwdarw. S consists of immunogenic components, a molecular which is probably a non-immunogenic parasite products, and host albumin. The implications of these findings for the construction of diagnostic tests to detect products of human filarial parasites are discussed.