Rangarajan Radha, Bei Amy, Henry Natohya, Madamet Marylin, Parzy Daniel, Nivez Marie-Paule, Doerig Christian, Sultan Ali
Department of Immunology and Infectious diseases, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Exp Parasitol. 2006 Mar;112(3):202-7. doi: 10.1016/j.exppara.2005.11.002. Epub 2005 Dec 20.
The molecular mechanisms underlying gametocytogenesis in malaria parasites are not understood. Plasmodium falciparum cdc2-related kinase 1 (pfcrk-1), a gene that is expressed predominantly in gametocytes, bears homology to the PITSLRE subfamily of cyclin-dependent kinases and has been hypothesized to function as a negative regulator of the cell cycle. We attempted to knock-out pbcrk-1, the P. berghei orthologue of pfcrk-1, but were unable to recover P. berghei parasites with a disrupted pbcrk-1 locus. In contrast, an integration event at this locus that did not result in a loss-of-function of the pbcrk-1 gene was readily observed. This strongly suggests that a functional pbcrk-1 gene product is essential to intraerythrocytic asexual multiplication.
疟原虫配子体形成的分子机制尚不清楚。恶性疟原虫细胞周期蛋白依赖性激酶2相关激酶1（pfcrk-1）是一种主要在配子体中表达的基因，与细胞周期蛋白依赖性激酶的PITSLRE亚家族具有同源性，并且据推测其功能是作为细胞周期的负调节因子。我们试图敲除pfcrk-1的伯氏疟原虫同源物pbcrk-1，但未能获得pbcrk-1基因座被破坏的伯氏疟原虫。相反，很容易观察到该基因座处的整合事件，该事件并未导致pbcrk-1基因功能丧失。这强烈表明功能性pbcrk-1基因产物对于红细胞内无性繁殖至关重要。
