Voss Till S, Bozdech Zbynek, Bártfai Richárd
Department of Medical Parasitology and Infection Biology, Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Socinstrasse 57, Basel 4051, Switzerland; University of Basel, Petersplatz 1, Basel 4003, Switzerland.
School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore.
Curr Opin Microbiol. 2014 Aug;20:88-95. doi: 10.1016/j.mib.2014.05.007. Epub 2014 Jun 17.
Malaria parasites run through a complex life cycle in the vertebrate host and mosquito vector. This not only requires tightly controlled mechanisms to govern stage-specific gene expression but also necessitates effective strategies for survival under changing environmental conditions. In recent years, the combination of different -omics approaches and targeted functional studies highlighted that Plasmodium falciparum blood stage parasites use heterochromatin-based gene silencing as a unifying strategy for clonally variant expression of hundreds of genes. In this article, we describe the epigenetic control mechanisms that mediate alternative expression states of genes involved in antigenic variation, nutrient uptake and sexual conversion and discuss the relevance of this strategy for the survival and transmission of malaria parasites.
疟原虫在脊椎动物宿主和蚊子媒介中经历复杂的生命周期。这不仅需要严格控制的机制来调控阶段特异性基因表达，还需要在不断变化的环境条件下生存的有效策略。近年来，不同组学方法与靶向功能研究的结合突显了恶性疟原虫血液阶段的寄生虫利用基于异染色质的基因沉默作为数百个基因克隆变异表达的统一策略。在本文中，我们描述了介导参与抗原变异、营养摄取和有性转化的基因的交替表达状态的表观遗传控制机制，并讨论了该策略对疟原虫生存和传播的相关性。
