A comparative transcriptomic analysis of replicating and dormant liver stages of the relapsing malaria parasite Plasmodium Cynomolgi
- Biomedical Primate Research Centre, Netherlands
- Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Switzerland
- Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research, Singapore
Abstract
Plasmodium liver hypnozoites, which cause disease relapse, are widely considered to be the last barrier towards malaria eradication. The biology of this quiescent form of the parasite is poorly understood which hinders drug discovery. We report a comparative transcriptomic dataset of replicating liver schizonts and dormant hypnozoites of the relapsing parasite Plasmodium cynomolgi. Hypnozoites express only 34% of Plasmodium physiological pathways, while 91% are expressed in replicating schizonts. Few known malaria drug targets are expressed in quiescent parasites, but pathways involved in microbial dormancy, maintenance of genome integrity and ATP homeostasis were robustly expressed. Several transcripts encoding heavy metal transporters were expressed in hypnozoites and the copper chelator neocuproine was cidal to all liver stage parasites. This transcriptomic dataset is a valuable resource for the discovery of vaccines and effective treatments to combat vivax malaria.
Data availability
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Malaria Liver Stages TranscriptomePublicly available at the NCBI Short Read Archive (accession no: SRP096160).
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Transcriptomic analysis of Plasmodium relapsing species identifies potential regulators of hypnozoite commitment and maintenanceEMBL-EBI European Nucleotide Archive [ENA: PRJEB18141; Sample group: ERS1461774].
Article and author information
Author details
Thierry Tidiane Diagana
Funding
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- Guglielmo Roma
- Clemens H M Kocken
- Thierry Tidiane Diagana
Medicines for Malaria Venture
- Clemens H M Kocken
- Thierry Tidiane Diagana
Wellcome
- Clemens H M Kocken
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Animal experimentation: Ethics statementNonhuman primates were used because no other models (in vitro or in vivo) were suitable for the aims of this project. The local independent ethical committee constituted conform Dutch law (BPRC Dier Experimenten Commissie, DEC) approved the research protocol (agreement number DEC# 708) prior to the start and the experiments were all performed according to Dutch and European laws. The Council of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC International) has awarded BPRC full accreditation. Thus, BPRC is fully compliant with the international demands on animal studies and welfare as set forth by the European Council Directive 2010/63/EU, and Convention ETS 123, including the revised Appendix A as well as the 'Standard for humane care and use of Laboratory Animals by Foreign institutions' identification number A5539-01, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States of America's National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Dutch implementing legislation. The rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta, either gender, age 4-7 years, Indian or mixed origin) used in this study were captive-bred and socially housed. Animal housing was according to international guidelines for nonhuman primate care and use. Besides their standard feeding regime, and drinking water ad libitum via an automatic watering system, the animals followed an environmental enrichment program in which, next to permanent and rotating non-food enrichment, an item of food-enrichment was offered to the macaques daily. All animals were monitored daily for health and discomfort. All intravenous injections and large blood collections were performed under ketamine sedation, and all efforts were made to minimize suffering. Liver lobes were collected from monkeys that were euthanized in the course of unrelated studies (ethically approved by the BPRC DEC) or euthanized for medical reasons, as assessed by a veterinarian. Therefore, none of the animals from which liver lobes were derived were specifically used for this work, according to the 3Rrule thereby reducing the numbers of animals used. Euthanasia was performed under ketamine sedation (10 mg/kg) and was induced by intracardiac injection of euthasol 20%, containing pentobarbital.
Copyright
© 2017, Voorberg-van der Wel et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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A comparative transcriptomic analysis of replicating and dormant liver stages of the relapsing malaria parasite Plasmodium Cynomolgi
eLife 6:e29605.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29605
Further reading
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- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Relapses of Plasmodium dormant liver hypnozoites compromise malaria eradication efforts. New radical cure drugs are urgently needed, yet the vast gap in knowledge of hypnozoite biology impedes drug discovery. We previously unraveled the transcriptome of 6 to 7 day-old P. cynomolgi liver stages, highlighting pathways associated with hypnozoite dormancy (Voorberg-van der Wel et al., 2017). We now extend these findings by transcriptome profiling of 9 to 10 day-old liver stage parasites, thus revealing for the first time the maturation of the dormant stage over time. Although progression of dormancy leads to a 10-fold decrease in transcription and expression of only 840 genes, including genes associated with housekeeping functions, we show that pathways involved in quiescence, energy metabolism and maintenance of genome integrity remain the prevalent pathways active in mature hypnozoites.
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- Genetics and Genomics
- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Polyamines are biologically ubiquitous cations that bind to nucleic acids, ribosomes, and phospholipids and, thereby, modulate numerous processes, including surface motility in Escherichia coli. We characterized the metabolic pathways that contribute to polyamine-dependent control of surface motility in the commonly used strain W3110 and the transcriptome of a mutant lacking a putrescine synthetic pathway that was required for surface motility. Genetic analysis showed that surface motility required type 1 pili, the simultaneous presence of two independent putrescine anabolic pathways, and modulation by putrescine transport and catabolism. An immunological assay for FimA—the major pili subunit, reverse transcription quantitative PCR of fimA, and transmission electron microscopy confirmed that pili synthesis required putrescine. Comparative RNAseq analysis of a wild type and ΔspeB mutant which exhibits impaired pili synthesis showed that the latter had fewer transcripts for pili structural genes and for fimB which codes for the phase variation recombinase that orients the fim operon promoter in the ON phase, although loss of speB did not affect the promoter orientation. Results from the RNAseq analysis also suggested (a) changes in transcripts for several transcription factor genes that affect fim operon expression, (b) compensatory mechanisms for low putrescine which implies a putrescine homeostatic network, and (c) decreased transcripts of genes for oxidative energy metabolism and iron transport which a previous genetic analysis suggests may be sufficient to account for the pili defect in putrescine synthesis mutants. We conclude that pili synthesis requires putrescine and putrescine concentration is controlled by a complex homeostatic network that includes the genes of oxidative energy metabolism.
