Similarly, in Babesia bovis, the cause of bovine babesiasis, expression of the variant erythrocyte surface antigen-1 (VESA1) is controlled by a bidirectional transcriptional promoter and multiple, noncoding regulatory elements flanking the ves1 genes (Al-Khedery and Allred 2006; Wang et al. The gene discussed is HOMER1; the disease is babesiosis.