Wanted Plasmodium falciparum, dead or alive

Authors:

Fatimata Sow1, Mary Nyonda1, Anne-Lise Bienvenu1, 2, Stephane Picot1, 2

doi: 10.15698/mic2015.07.211
Volume 2, pp. 219 to 224, published 06/07/2015.

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Affiliations:

1 University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Malaria Research Unit, SMITh, ICBMS, UMR 5246 CNRS-INSA-CPE-UCBL1, 8 avenue Rockefeller, 69373 Lyon cedex 08, France.

2 Hospices Civils de Lyon, Institut de Parasitologie et de Mycologie Médicale (IP2M), Hôpital de la Croix-Rousse, 103 grande rue de la Croix-Rousse, 69317 Lyon cedex 04, France.

Keywords: 

Plasmodium, malaria, apoptosis, autophagy, cell death

Corresponding Author(s):

Stephane Picot, University Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Malaria Research Unit, SMITh, ICBMS, UMR 5246 CNRS-INSA-CPE-UCBL1, 8 avenue Rockefeller, 69373 Lyon cedex 08, France stephane.picot@univ-lyon1.fr

Conflict of interest statement:

All authors read and approved the final manuscript. The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Please cite this article as:

Fatimata Sow, Mary Nyonda, Anne-Lise Bienvenu, Stephane Picot (2015). Wanted Plasmodium falciparum, dead or alive. Microbial Cell 2(7): 219-224.

© 2015 Sow 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:

Mechanisms of cell death in unicellular parasites have been subjects of debate for the last decade, with studies demonstrating evidence of apoptosis or non-apoptosis like mechanisms, including necrosis, and autophagy. Recent clarifications on the definition of regulated or accidental cell death by The Nomenclature Committee on Cell Death provides an opportunity to reanalyze some data, re-evaluate conclusions in the light of parasite diversity, and to propose alternative arguments in the context of malaria drug resistance, considering lack of really new drugs in the pipeline. Deciphering the mechanisms of death may help in detection of new drug targets and the design of innovative drugs. However, classifications have been evolving rapidly since initial description of “programmed cell death”, leading to some uncertainty as to whether Plasmodium cell death is accidental or regulated.