Last Updated: 04/12/2025

Signaling in malaria parasites during erythrocyte invasion

Objectives

*Original title and text were machine translated from Japanese

This project investigates the intracellular signaling mechanisms of malaria parasites during erythrocyte invasion using transgenic Plasmodium yoelii.

Principal Investigators / Focal Persons

Osamu Kaneko

Partner Investigators

Kazuhide Yahata
Masahito Asada

Rationale and Abstract

Erythrocyte invasion is an essential step for malaria parasites, however, its intracellular signaling is not fully understood. To gain further insights of such signaling mechanism, a panel of transgenic rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium yoelii was generated and analyzed in which the expression of target proteins could be inducibly silenced. Several kinases were identified to be essential during erythrocyte invasion and one pseudokinases has a role at sexual stage in the mosquitoes in addition to a role during erythrocyte invasion. It was also visualized that the parasite could not tightly bind to the eryrhrocyte when a parasite ligand called EBL was silenced. Lastly, new insights about the virulence of P. yoelii was attained.

Date

Apr 2016 — Mar 2019

Total Project Funding

$158,891

Funding Details
Project Site

Japan

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