Signal transduction during erythrocyte invasion by malaria parasites

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25293102
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Parasitology (including sanitary zoology)
• Research Institution: Nagasaki University
• Principal Investigator: KANEKO Osamu 長崎大学, 熱帯医学研究所, 教授 (50325370)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): YAHATA Kazuhide 長崎大学, 熱帯医学研究所, 助教 (40467965)
• Research Collaborator: ASADA Masahito 長崎大学, 熱帯医学研究所, 助教
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 原虫 / マラリア / 侵入 / シグナル伝達 / 赤血球

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Malaria parasites invade into erythrocytes using molecules sequentially released from their apical microorganelles. However, the details of the signal transduction during erythrocyte invasion by the parasites is largely unknown. In this study, we tried to adapt the conditional knock-down/knock-out systems to the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium yoelii aiming to apply the developed systems to answer above question. We were able to inducibly delete the gene loci for an exogenous mCherry or an non-essential protein in the transgenic P. yoelii, however, the gene locus of the essential molecule was not deleted by the induction. Thus we continued to optimize this systems in P. yoelii. In addition to this effort, we established a platform to examine parasite phenotypes during erythrocyte invasion by developing a method to isolate erythrocyte-invasive P. yoelii merozoites and a robust method to monitor the intracellular Ca2+ level of the malaria parasites.

Free Research Field

医歯薬学