Journal article
Mitochondrial ATP synthase is dispensable in blood-stage Plasmodium berghei rodent malaria but essential in the mosquito phase
A Sturm, V Mollard, A Cozijnsen, CD Goodman, GI McFadden
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | Published : 2015
Abstract
Mitochondrial ATP synthase is driven by chemiosmotic oxidation of pyruvate derived from glycolysis. Blood-stage malaria parasites eschew chemiosmosis, instead relying almost solely on glycolysis for their ATP generation, which begs the question of whether mitochondrial ATP synthase is necessary during the blood stage of the parasite life cycle. We knocked out the mitochondrial ATP synthase β subunit gene in the rodent malaria parasite, Plasmodium berghei, ablating the protein that converts ADP to ATP. Disruption of the β subunit gene of the ATP synthase only marginally reduced asexual blood-stage parasite growth but completely blocked mouse-to-mouse transmission via Anopheles stephensi mosqu..
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Funding Acknowledgements
We thank Andy Waters for the Pbs48/45KO and Delta p47 lines, Rebecca Stanaway for the pL0017-GFP<INF>APICO</INF> plasmid, and Bob Sinden for the anti-Pbs28 antibody. We thank Marcelo Jacobs-Lorena for teaching us to infect mosquitoes and Jake Baum for suggesting the cross. We thank the ImmunoID Flow Cytometry Facility at the University of Melbourne for assisting with the growth competition experiment. A.S. was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). We gratefully acknowledge a National Health and Medical Research Council Program Grant, an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship, and an Australian Research Council Discovery Project (to G.I.M.).