Conditional expression of apical membrane antigen 1 in Plasmodium falciparum shows it is required for erythrocyte invasion by merozoites
- Author(s)
- Yap, A; Azevedo, MF; Gilson, PR; Weiss, GE; O'Neill, MT; Wilson, DW; Crabb, BS; Cowman, AF;
- Details
- Publication Year 2014-02-27,Volume 16,Issue #5,Page 642-56
- Journal Title
- Cellular Microbiology
- Publication Type
- Journal Article
- Abstract
- Malaria is caused by obligate intracellular parasites, of which Plasmodium falciparum is the most lethal species. In humans, P. falciparum merozoites (invasive forms of the parasite) employ a host of parasite proteins to rapidly invade erythrocytes. One of these is the P. falciparum apical membrane antigen 1 (PfAMA1) which forms a complex with rhoptry neck proteins at the tight junction. Here, we have placed the Pfama1 gene under conditional control using dimerizable Cre recombinase (DiCre) in P. falciparum. DiCre-mediated excision of the loxP-flanked Pfama1 gene results in approximately 80% decreased expression of the protein within one intraerythrocytic growth cycle. This reduces growth by 40%, due to decreased invasion efficiency characterized by a post-invasion defect in sealing of the parasitophorous vacuole. These results show that PfAMA1 is an essential protein for merozoite invasion in P. falciparum and either directly or indirectly plays a role in resealing of the red blood cell at the posterior end of the invasion event.
- Publisher
- WILEY
- Research Division(s)
- Infection And Immunity
- Publisher's Version
- https://doi.org/10.1111/cmi.12287
- Open Access at Publisher's Site
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cmi.12287/full- NHMRC Grants
- NHMRC/637406,
- Terms of Use/Rights Notice
- © 2014 The Authors. Cellular Microbiology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purpose
Creation Date: 2014-04-16 08:43:46
Last Modified: 2014-12-17 11:37:42