Journal article
Cryo transmission X-ray imaging of the malaria parasite, P. falciparum
E Hanssen, C Knoechel, N Klonis, N Abu-Bakar, S Deed, M LeGros, C Larabell, L Tilley
Journal of Structural Biology | ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE | Published : 2011
Abstract
Cryo transmission X-ray microscopy in the " water window" of photon energies has recently been introduced as a method that exploits the natural contrast of biological samples. We have used cryo tomographic X-ray imaging of the intra-erythrocytic malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, to undertake a survey of the cellular features of this important human pathogen. We examined whole hydrated cells at different stages of growth and defined some of the structures with different X-ray density, including the parasite nucleus, cytoplasm, digestive vacuole and the hemoglobin degradation product, hemozoin. As the parasite develops from an early cup-shaped morphology to a more rounded shape, puncta ..
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Awarded by National Institutes of Health
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge support from the Australian Research Council and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the US Department of Energy, Office of Biological and Environmental Research (DE-AC02-05CH11231), the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health (P41RR019664) and the National Institutes of General Medicine of the National Institutes of Health (GM63948). Use of the Advanced Light Source was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science. We thank Sam Deed, Wei-Wei Gu, Dilworth Parkinson and Emily Wilson for technical support. We thank Professor Peter Beck, Swiss Tropical Institute for supplying transfected parasites, Assoc. Prof. Mike Ryan, La Trobe University, for anti-GFP antibodies.