Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA; email:
Annu Rev Microbiol. 2018 Sep 8;72:355-375. doi: 10.1146/annurev-micro-090817-062722. Epub 2018 Jun 21.
Eukaryotic pathogens must survive in different hosts, respond to changing environments, and exploit specialized niches to propagate. Plasmodium parasites cause human malaria during bloodstream infections, where they must persist long enough to be transmitted. Parasites have evolved diverse strategies of variant gene expression that control critical biological processes of blood-stage infections, including antigenic variation, erythrocyte invasion, innate immune evasion, and nutrient acquisition, as well as life-cycle transitions. Epigenetic mechanisms within the parasite are being elucidated, with discovery of epigenomic marks associated with gene silencing and activation, and the identification of epigenetic regulators and chromatin proteins that are required for the switching and maintenance of gene expression. Here, we review the key epigenetic processes that facilitate transition through the parasite life cycle and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms utilized by Plasmodium parasites to survive changing environments and consider epigenetic switching in the context of the outcome of human infections.
真核病原体必须在不同的宿主中生存，应对不断变化的环境，并利用专门的小生境进行繁殖。疟原虫寄生虫在血流感染期间引起人类疟疾，它们必须存活足够长的时间才能传播。寄生虫已经进化出多种变异基因表达策略，这些策略控制着血阶段感染的关键生物学过程，包括抗原变异、红细胞入侵、先天免疫逃避和营养获取，以及生命周期的转变。寄生虫内部的表观遗传机制正在被阐明，发现了与基因沉默和激活相关的表观遗传标记，以及识别用于基因表达开关和维持的表观遗传调节剂和染色质蛋白。在这里，我们回顾了促进寄生虫生命周期转变的关键表观遗传过程，以及疟原虫寄生虫用于在不断变化的环境中生存的表观遗传调控机制，并考虑了人类感染的结果背景下的表观遗传开关。
