Translational repression in malaria sporozoites

Authors:

Oliver Turque1, Tiffany Tsao1, Thomas Li1 and Min Zhang1,2

doi: 10.15698/mic2016.05.502
Volume 3, pp. 227 to 229, published 05/04/2016.

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Affiliations:

1 HIV and Malaria Vaccine Program, Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, Affiliate of The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA.

2 Department of Pathology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.

Keywords: 

Plasmodium, sporozoites, latency, eIF2α, UIS1, UIS2, translational repression.

Corresponding Author(s):

Min Zhang, Dr.Min.Zhang@gmail.com

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare that no competing interest exists.

Please cite this article as:

Oliver Turque, Tiffany Tsao, Thomas Li and Min Zhang (2016). Translational repression in malaria sporozoites. Microbial Cell 3(5): 227-229. doi: 10.15698/mic2016.05.502

© 2016 Turque et al. 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 reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals. It is caused by the parasitic protozoan, Plasmodium. Sporozoites, the infectious form of malaria parasites, are quiescent when they remain in the salivary glands of the Anopheles mosquito until transmission into a mammalian host. Metamorphosis of the dormant sporozoite to its active form in the liver stage requires transcriptional and translational regulations. Here, we summarize recent advances in the translational repression of gene expression in the malaria sporozoite. In sporozoites, many mRNAs that are required for liver stage development are translationally repressed. Phosphorylation of eukaryotic Initiation Factor 2α (eIF2α) leads to a global translational repression in sporozoites. The eIF2α kinase, known as Upregulated in Infectious Sporozoite 1 (UIS1), is dominant in the sporozoite. The eIF2α phosphatase, UIS2, is translationally repressed by the Pumilio protein Puf2. This translational repression is alleviated when sporozoites are delivered into the mammalian host.