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Lysophosphatidylcholine Regulates Sexual Stage Differentiation in the Human Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum.

Cell | 2017

Transmission represents a population bottleneck in the Plasmodium life cycle and a key intervention target of ongoing efforts to eradicate malaria. Sexual differentiation is essential for this process, as only sexual parasites, called gametocytes, are infective to the mosquito vector. Gametocyte production rates vary depending on environmental conditions, but external stimuli remain obscure. Here, we show that the host-derived lipid lysophosphatidylcholine (LysoPC) controls P. falciparum cell fate by repressing parasite sexual differentiation. We demonstrate that exogenous LysoPC drives biosynthesis of the essential membrane component phosphatidylcholine. LysoPC restriction induces a compensatory response, linking parasite metabolism to the activation of sexual-stage-specific transcription and gametocyte formation. Our results reveal that malaria parasites can sense and process host-derived physiological signals to regulate differentiation. These data close a critical knowledge gap in parasite biology and introduce a major component of the sexual differentiation pathway in Plasmodium that may provide new approaches for blocking malaria transmission.

Pubmed ID: 29129376 RIS Download

Associated grants

  • Agency: NCCIH NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 AT009874
  • Agency: NIGMS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 GM086258
  • Agency: NIGMS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: F32 GM116205
  • Agency: Wellcome Trust, United Kingdom
    Id: 110166/Z/15/Z
  • Agency: NHLBI NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 HL139337
  • Agency: Wellcome Trust, United Kingdom
  • Agency: NIAID NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 AI094973

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This is a list of tools and resources that we have found mentioned in this publication.


PlasmoDB (tool)

RRID:SCR_013331

Functional 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.

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Imaris (tool)

RRID:SCR_007370

Imaris provides range of capabilities for working with three dimensional images. Uses flexible editing and processing functions, such as interactive surface rendering and object slicing capabilities. And output to standard TIFF, Quicktime and AVI formats. Imaris accepts virtually all image formats that are used in confocal microscopy and many of those used in wide-field image acquisition.

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RRID:SCR_008984

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CHOPCHOP (tool)

RRID:SCR_015723

Web application for designing gRNAs for CRISPR/Cas9 experiments. It selects target sites for CRISPR/Cas9, CRISPR/Cpf1 or TALEN-directed mutagenesis.

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Agilent MassHunter WorkStation - Qualitative Analysis for GC/MS (tool)

RRID:SCR_016657

Software tools for compound-centric data mining and navigation. Used to identify compounds in overlapping and co-eluting peaks with feature extraction and correlation algorithms for chromatographic separation. Used for separating true signals from noise.

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C57BL/6J (tool)

RRID:IMSR_JAX:000664

Mus musculus with name C57BL/6J from IMSR.

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RRID:MGI:2164189

laboratory mouse with name C57BL/6JOlaHsd from MGI.

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CD71-APC, human (antibody)

RRID:AB_615103

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R Project for Statistical Computing (software resource)

RRID:SCR_001905

Software environment and programming language for statistical computing and graphics. R is integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display. Can be extended via packages. Some packages are supplied with the R distribution and more are available through CRAN family.It compiles and runs on wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS.

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Cufflinks (software resource)

RRID:SCR_014597

Software tool for transcriptome assembly and differential expression analysis for RNA-Seq. Includes script called cuffmerge that can be used to merge together several Cufflinks assemblies. It also handles running Cuffcompare as well as automatically filtering a number of transfrags that are likely to be artifacts. If the researcher has a reference GTF file, the researcher can provide it to the script to more effectively merge novel isoforms and maximize overall assembly quality.

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Fiji (software resource)

RRID:SCR_002285

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.

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TopHat (software resource)

RRID:SCR_013035

Software tool for fast and high throughput alignment of shotgun cDNA sequencing reads generated by transcriptomics technologies. Fast splice junction mapper for RNA-Seq reads. Aligns RNA-Seq reads to mammalian-sized genomes using ultra high-throughput short read aligner Bowtie, and then analyzes mapping results to identify splice junctions between exons.TopHat2 is accurate alignment of transcriptomes in presence of insertions, deletions and gene fusions.

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R Project for Statistical Computing (software resource)

RRID:SCR_001905

Software environment and programming language for statistical computing and graphics. R is integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display. Can be extended via packages. Some packages are supplied with the R distribution and more are available through CRAN family.It compiles and runs on wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS.

View all literature mentions

Cufflinks (software resource)

RRID:SCR_014597

Software tool for transcriptome assembly and differential expression analysis for RNA-Seq. Includes script called cuffmerge that can be used to merge together several Cufflinks assemblies. It also handles running Cuffcompare as well as automatically filtering a number of transfrags that are likely to be artifacts. If the researcher has a reference GTF file, the researcher can provide it to the script to more effectively merge novel isoforms and maximize overall assembly quality.

View all literature mentions

Fiji (software resource)

RRID:SCR_002285

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 mentions

TopHat (software resource)

RRID:SCR_013035

Software tool for fast and high throughput alignment of shotgun cDNA sequencing reads generated by transcriptomics technologies. Fast splice junction mapper for RNA-Seq reads. Aligns RNA-Seq reads to mammalian-sized genomes using ultra high-throughput short read aligner Bowtie, and then analyzes mapping results to identify splice junctions between exons.TopHat2 is accurate alignment of transcriptomes in presence of insertions, deletions and gene fusions.

View all literature mentions

CD71-APC, human (antibody)

RRID:AB_615103

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View all literature mentions