Malaria Parasite Metabolic Pathways

Malaria, sickle cell hemoglobin, high-mannose glycans, and erythrocyte phagocytosis Plasmodium falciparum shieldsfrom adaptive immunity in erythrocytes, but how might the innate immune system recognize infected cells? Replication by the parasiter esults in oxidative stress, causing surface expression of high-mannose glycans. Thes

The organization of KAHRP We show by super-resolution microscopy that KAHRP initially associates with various skeletal components, including ankyrin bridges, but eventually colocalizes with remnant actin junctions. We further present a 35Å map of the spiral scaffold underlying kno

Involvement of host-miRNAs in Plasmodium infections Presently, the role of non-coding microRNAs (miRNAs) derived from different cells implicated in CM pathogenesis is still barely understood. Despite the absence of miRNA machinery in Plasmodium, host-parasite interactions can lead to disease severity or im

Zinc-finger proteins ZFPs are involved in diverse cellular processes of eukaryotes. Our genome wide analysis identified 170 ZFPs in P. falciparum, most of which are in the C2H2, CCCH, RING finger and the PHD subfamily. While the role of the majority of these ZFPs is not yet k

Zinc-finger motifs and proteins Zinc-finger proteins (ZFPs) are a large diverse family of proteins with one or more zinc finger domains in which zinc is important in stabilizing the domain. ZFPs can interact with DNA, RNA, lipids or even other proteins and therefore contribute to divers

ApiAP2 transcription factor PfAP2-HS drives activation of essential heat-shock responses The malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum survives fever during human infection by using a transcription factor to regulate its heat-shock response.

Early transmission stage development of Plasmodium and putative PTM involvement Post-translational modifications (PTMs) allow proteins to regulate their structure, localisation and function in response to cell intrinsic and environmental signals. The diversity and number of modifications on proteins increase the complexity of cellula

All glycans with a role in Plasmodium infection Different glycans on the parasite and the host cell surface play significant roles in both malaria pathogenesis and host defense mechanisms. So far, only small, truncated N- and O-glycans have been identified in Plasmodium species. In contrast, complex gl

Parasite survival of host fever Here, we develop a large-scale phenotypic screeningpipeline and use it to carry out a large-scale forward-genetic phenotype screen in P. falciparum to identify genes allowing parasites to survive febrile temperatures. Screening identifies more than 200 P.

RNA of unknown function or non coding The genomes of large multicellular eukaryotes are mostly comprised of non-protein coding DNA. Although there has been much agreement that a small fraction of these genomes has important biological functions, there has been much debate as to whether the re

Cerebral Malaria and Protein S-Nitrosylation The pathological mechanism of CM involves multimechanism interactions, including low nitric oxide (NO) bioavailability. Low NO bioavailability in the brain is due to numerous factors including the strong binding of free heme to NO, hemolysis leading to hy

The apical complex and the fusion events required for rhoptry discharge the first description of the molecular machinery used for motility and invasion, revealing a crucial role for two different secretory organelles, micronemes and rhoptries. Rhoptry proteins are injected directly into the host cytoplasm not only to promote

uORF-mediated translational regulation in the asexual stage This review provides a comprehensive summary of studies that show uORF-mediated gene regulation in these parasites and highlights examples of clinically and physiologically relevant genes, including var2csa in P. falciparum, and ApiAT1 in T. gondii, that

Divergent composition of the respiratory chain complexes we apply complexome profiling to map the inventory of protein complexes across the pathogenic asexual blood stages and the transmissible gametocyte stages of Plasmodium falciparum. We identify remarkably divergent composition and clade-specific additions

RNA Structurome The differential accumulation of RNA secondary structures in coding and noncoding transcripts from the asexual developmental cycle in P. falciparum in human red blood cells. Our comprehensive analysis that combined high-throughput nuclease mapping of RNA