Erythrocyte phospho-signalling is dynamically altered during infection with Plasmodium falciparum
Authors:Jack D. Adderley1 and Christian Doerig1
doi: 10.15698/mic2020.10.733
Volume 7, pp. 286 to 288, published 16/09/2020.
1 Centre for Chronic Infectious and Inflammation Disease, Biomedical Sciences Cluster, School of Health and Biomedical Sciences, RMIT University, Bundoora VIC 3083, Australia.
Keywords:
malaria, protein kinase, kinomics, host-directed therapy HDT, host-pathogen interactions, signaling
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Please cite this article as:
Jack D. Adderley and Christian Doerig (2020). Erythrocyte phospho-signalling is dynamically altered during infection with Plasmodium falciparum. Microbial Cell 7(10): 286-288. doi: 10.15698/mic2020.10.733
© 2020 Adderley and Doerig. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduc-tion in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
It is well established that intracellular pathogens mobilise signalling pathways to manipulate gene expression of their host cell to promote their own survival. Surprisingly, there is evidence that specific host signalling molecules are likewise activated in a-nucleated erythrocytes in response to infection with malaria parasites. In this paper (Adderley et al., Nature Communications 2020), we report the system-wide assessment of host erythrocyte signalling during the course of infection with Plasmodium falciparum. This was achieved through the use of antibody microarrays containing >800 antibodies directed against human signalling proteins, which enabled us to interrogate the status of host erythrocyte signalling pathways at the ring, trophozoite and schizont stages of parasite development. This not only confirmed the pre-existing fragmentary data on the activation of a host erythrocyte PAK-MEK pathway, but also identified dynamic changes to many additional signalling elements, with trophozoite-infected erythrocytes displaying the largest mobilisation of host cell signalling. This study generated a comprehensive dataset on the modulation of host erythrocyte signalling during infection with P. falciparum, and provides the proof of principle that human protein kinases activated by Plasmodium infection represent attractive targets for antimalarial intervention.