Plasmodium falciparum MLH is schizont stage specific endonuclease.

Malaria is one of the most important infectious diseases in many regions around the world including India. Plasmodium falciparum is the cause of most lethal form of malaria while Plasmodium vivax is the major cause outside Africa. Regardless of considerable efforts over the last many years there is still no commercial vaccine against malaria and the disease is mainly treated using a range of established drugs. With time, the malaria parasite is developing drug resistance to most of the commonly used drugs. This drug resistance might be due to defective mismatch repair in the parasite. Previously we have reported that the P. falciparum genome contains homologues to most of the components of mismatch repair (MMR) complex. In the present study we report the detailed biochemical characterization of one of the main component of MMR complex, MLH, from P. falciparum. Our results show that MLH is an ATPase and it can incise covalently closed circular DNA in the presence of Mn(2+) or Mg(2+) ions. Using the truncated derivatives we show that full length protein MLH is required for all the enzymatic activities. Using immunodepletion assays we further show that the ATPase and endomuclease activities are attributable to PfMLH protein. Using immunofluorescence assay we report that the peak expression of MLH in both 3D7 and Dd2 strains of P. falciparum is mainly in the schizont stages of the intraerythrocytic development, where DNA replication is active. MMR also contributes to the overall fidelity of DNA replication and the peak expression of MLH in the schizont stages suggests that MLH is most likely involved in correcting the mismatches occurring during replication. This study should make a significant contribution in our better understanding of DNA metabolic processes in the parasite.