Are you sure you want to leave this community? Leaving the community will revoke any permissions you have been granted in this community.
Microtubules are cytoskeletal filaments essential for many cellular processes, including establishment and maintenance of polarity, intracellular transport, division and migration. In most metazoan cells, the number and length of microtubules are highly variable, while they can be precisely defined in some protozoan organisms. However, in either case the significance of these two key parameters for cells is not known. Here, we quantitatively studied the impact of modulating microtubule number and length in Plasmodium, the protozoan parasite causing malaria. Using a gene deletion and replacement strategy targeting one out of two α-tubulin genes, we show that chromosome segregation proceeds in the oocysts even in the absence of microtubules. However, fewer and shorter microtubules severely impaired the formation, motility and infectivity of Plasmodium sporozoites, the forms transmitted by the mosquito, which usually contain 16 microtubules. We found that α-tubulin expression levels directly determined the number of microtubules, suggesting a high nucleation barrier as supported by a mathematical model. Infectious sporozoites were only formed in parasite lines featuring at least 10 microtubules, while parasites with 9 or fewer microtubules failed to transmit.
Pubmed ID: 31368598
Publication data is provided by the National Library of Medicine ® and PubMed ®. Data is retrieved from PubMed ® on a weekly schedule. For terms and conditions see the National Library of Medicine Terms and Conditions.
Software package as distribution of ImageJ and ImageJ2 together with Java, Java3D and plugins organized into coherent menu structure. Used to assist research in life sciences.
View all literature mentionsCollection of data of protein sequence and functional information. Resource for protein sequence and annotation data. Consortium for preservation of the UniProt databases: UniProt Knowledgebase (UniProtKB), UniProt Reference Clusters (UniRef), and UniProt Archive (UniParc), UniProt Proteomes. Collaboration between European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and Protein Information Resource. Swiss-Prot is a curated subset of UniProtKB.
View all literature mentionsStatistical analysis software that combines scientific graphing, comprehensive curve fitting (nonlinear regression), understandable statistics, and data organization. Designed for biological research applications in pharmacology, physiology, and other biological fields for data analysis, hypothesis testing, and modeling.
View all literature mentionsA free, cross-platform set of image processing, modeling and display programs used for tomographic reconstruction and for 3D reconstruction of EM serial sections and optical sections. The package contains tools for assembling and aligning data within multiple types and sizes of image stacks, viewing 3-D data from any orientation, and modeling and display of the image files. IMOD 4.1.8 Is Now Available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X
View all literature mentionsCommercial organism provider selling mice, rats and other model animals. American corporation specializing in a variety of pre-clinical and clinical laboratory services for the pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology industries. It also supplies assorted biomedical products and research and development outsourcing services for use in the pharmaceutical industry. (Wikipedia)
View all literature mentionsCommercial vendor and service provider of laboratory reagents and antibodies. Supplier of scientific instrumentation, reagents and consumables, and software services.
View all literature mentionsFunctional genomic database for malaria parasites. Database for Plasmodium spp. Provides resource for data analysis and visualization in gene-by-gene or genome-wide scale. PlasmoDB 5.5 contains annotated genomes, evidence of transcription, proteomics evidence, protein function evidence, population biology and evolution data. Data can be queried by selecting from query grid or drop down menus. Results can be combined with each other on query history page. Search results can be downloaded with associated functional data and registered users can store their query history for future retrieval or analysis.Key community database for malaria researchers, intersecting many types of laboratory and computational data, aggregated by gene.
View all literature mentionsMolecular biology software for visualizing and documenting gene constructs for InFusion cloning, Gibson assembly, restriction cloning, PCR, and mutagenesis.
View all literature mentionsMus musculus with name C57BL/6J from IMSR.
View all literature mentions