Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Bernhard-Nocht-Str. 74, 20359 Hamburg, Germany.
Cell Microbiol. 2011 Nov;13(11):1768-82. doi: 10.1111/j.1462-5822.2011.01657.x. Epub 2011 Aug 31.
The liver stage of the Plasmodium parasite remains one of the most promising targets for intervention against malaria as it is clinically silent, precedes the symptomatic blood stage and represents a bottleneck in the parasite life cycle. However, many aspects of the development of the parasite during this stage are far from understood. During the liver stage, the parasite undergoes extensive replication, forming tens of thousands of infectious merozoites from each invading sporozoite. This implies a very efficient and accurate process of cytokinesis and thus also of organelle development and segregation. We have generated for the first time Plasmodium berghei double-fluorescent parasite lines, allowing visualization of the apicoplast, mitochondria and nuclei in live liver stage parasites. Using these we have seen that in parallel with nuclear division, the apicoplast and mitochondrion become two extensively branched and intertwining structures. The organelles then undergo impressive morphological and positional changes prior to cell division. To form merozoites, the parasite undergoes cytokinesis and the complex process of organelle development and segregation into the forming daughter merozoites could be analysed in detail using the newly generated transgenic parasites.
疟原虫的肝脏阶段仍然是干预疟疾的最有前途的靶点之一，因为它在临床上是无声的，先于有症状的血液阶段，并且代表了寄生虫生命周期中的一个瓶颈。然而，寄生虫在这个阶段的许多发展方面还远未被理解。在肝脏阶段，寄生虫经历了广泛的复制，从每个入侵的子孢子形成数万个感染性裂殖子。这意味着细胞分裂过程非常高效和准确，因此细胞器的发育和分离也是如此。我们首次生成了双荧光疟原虫系，允许在活的肝脏阶段寄生虫中可视化类质体、线粒体和核。使用这些，我们看到在核分裂的同时，类质体和线粒体变成两个广泛分支和交织的结构。然后，细胞器在细胞分裂前经历显著的形态和位置变化。为了形成裂殖子，寄生虫经历细胞分裂，细胞器的复杂发育和分离到形成的子裂殖子的过程可以使用新生成的转基因寄生虫进行详细分析。
