Evidence that Plasmodium falciparum chromosome end clusters are cross-linked by protein and are the sites of both virulence gene silencing and activation

Abstract

The malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum undergoes antigenic variation through allelic exclusion and variant expression of surface proteins encoded by the var gene family. Regulation of var genes is under epigenetic control and involves reversible silencing and activation that requires the physical repositioning of a var locus into a transcriptionally permissive zone of the nuclear periphery. P. falciparum chromosome ends appear to aggregate into large perinuclear clusters which house both subtelomeric and chromosome central var genes. In this study we further define the composition of telomeric clusters using fluorescent in situ hybridization, and provide evidence that chromosome end clus..