Deitsch K, Driskill C, Wellems T
Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
Nucleic Acids Res. 2001 Feb 1;29(3):850-3. doi: 10.1093/nar/29.3.850.
The uptake and expression of extracellular DNA has been established as a mechanism for horizontal transfer of genes between bacterial species. Such transfer can support acquisition of advantageous elements, including determinants that affect the interactions between infectious organisms and their hosts. Here we show that erythrocyte-stage Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites spontaneously take up DNA from the host cell cytoplasm into their nuclei. We have exploited this finding to produce levels of reporter expression in P.falciparum that are substantially improved over those obtained by electroporation protocols currently used to transfect malaria parasites. Parasites were transformed to a drug-resistant state when placed into cell culture with erythrocytes containing a plasmid encoding the human dihydrofolate reductase sequence. The findings reported here suggest that the malaria genome may be continually exposed to exogenous DNA from residual nuclear material in host erythrocytes.
细胞外DNA的摄取和表达已被确认为细菌物种间基因水平转移的一种机制。这种转移能够支持获取有利元件,包括影响感染性生物体与其宿主之间相互作用的决定因素。在此我们表明,红细胞期恶性疟原虫疟原虫会自发地将宿主细胞质中的DNA摄取到其细胞核中。我们利用这一发现,使恶性疟原虫中的报告基因表达水平相比目前用于转染疟原虫的电穿孔方案所获得的水平有了显著提高。当将寄生虫置于含有编码人二氢叶酸还原酶序列的质粒的红细胞的细胞培养物中时,寄生虫会转变为耐药状态。此处报道的研究结果表明,疟原虫基因组可能持续暴露于宿主红细胞中残留核物质的外源DNA。