A new mass spectral library for high-coverage and reproducible analysis of the Plasmodium falciparum-infected red blood cell proteome.

Background: Plasmodium falciparum causes the majority of malaria mortality worldwide, and the disease occurs during the asexual red blood cell (RBC) stage of infection. In the absence of an effective and available vaccine, and with increasing drug resistance, asexual RBC stage parasites are an important research focus. In recent years, mass spectrometry-based proteomics using data-dependent acquisition has been extensively used to understand the biochemical processes within the parasite.

Human Aurora kinase inhibitor Hesperadin reveals epistatic interaction between Plasmodium falciparum PfArk1 and PfNek1 kinases.

Mitosis has been validated by numerous anti-cancer drugs as being a druggable process, and selective inhibition of parasite proliferation provides an obvious opportunity for therapeutic intervention against malaria. Mitosis is controlled through the interplay between several protein kinases and phosphatases. We show here that inhibitors of human mitotic kinases belonging to the Aurora family inhibit P.

Interaction of Plasmodium falciparum casein kinase 1 with components of host cell protein trafficking machinery.

A pool of Plasmodium falciparum casein kinase 1 (PfCK1) has been shown to localize to the host red blood cell (RBC) membrane and be secreted to the extracellular medium during trophozoite stage of development. We attempted to identify mechanisms for secretion of PfCK1 and its appearance on the RBC membrane. We found that two host proteins with established functions in membrane trafficking in higher eukaryotes, GTPase-activating protein and Vps9 domain-containing protein 1 (GAPVD1), and Sorting nexin 22, consistently co-purify with PfCK1, suggesting that the parasite utilizes trafficking pathways previously thought to be inactive in RBCs.