| Literature DB >> 29590075 |
Michael Filarsky1,2, Sabine A Fraschka3, Igor Niederwieser1,2, Nicolas M B Brancucci1,2, Eilidh Carrington1,2, Elvira Carrió1,2, Suzette Moes4, Paul Jenoe4, Richárd Bártfai3, Till S Voss5,2.
Abstract
Malaria is caused by Plasmodium parasites that proliferate in the bloodstream. During each replication cycle, some parasites differentiate into gametocytes, the only forms able to infect the mosquito vector and transmit malaria. Sexual commitment is triggered by activation of AP2-G, the master transcriptional regulator of gametocytogenesis. Heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1)-dependent silencing of ap2-g prevents sexual conversion in proliferating parasites. In this study, we identified Plasmodium falciparum gametocyte development 1 (GDV1) as an upstream activator of sexual commitment. We found that GDV1 targeted heterochromatin and triggered HP1 eviction, thus derepressing ap2-g Expression of GDV1 was responsive to environmental triggers of sexual conversion and controlled via a gdv1 antisense RNA. Hence, GDV1 appears to act as an effector protein that induces sexual differentiation by antagonizing HP1-dependent gene silencing.Entities:
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Year: 2018 PMID： 29590075 PMCID： PMC6219702 DOI： 10.1126/science.aan6042
Source DB: PubMed Journal: Science ISSN： 0036-8075 Impact factor: 47.728