G-Quadruplex DNA Motifs in the Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum and Their Potential as Novel Antimalarial Drug Targets.

ABSTRACT: G-quadruplexes are DNA or RNA secondary structures that can be formed from guanine-rich nucleic acids. These four-stranded structures, composed of stacked quartets of guanine bases, can be highly stable and have been demonstrated to occur in vivo in the DNA of human cells and other systems, where they play important biological roles, influencing processes such as telomere maintenance, DNA replication and transcription, or, in the case of RNA G-quadruplexes, RNA translation and processing. We report for the first time that DNA G-quadruplexes can be detected in the nuclei of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which has one of the most A/T-biased genomes sequenced and therefore possesses few guanine-rich sequences with the potential to form G-quadruplexes. We show that despite this p

SUBMITTER: Harris LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5826154 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature