A Plasmodium berghei putative serine-threonine kinase 2 (PBANKA_0311400) is required for late liver stage development and timely initiation of blood stage infection.

ABSTRACT: In Plasmodium, protein kinases govern key biological processes of the parasite life cycle involved in the establishment of infection, dissemination and sexual reproduction. The rodent malaria model Plasmodium berghei encodes for 66 putative eukaryotic protein kinases (ePKs) as identified through modelling domain signatures and are highly conserved in Plasmodium falciparum We report here the functional characterisation of a putative serine-threonine kinase PBANKA_0311400 identified in this kinome analysis and designate it as Pbstk2 To elucidate its role, we knocked out Pbstk2 locus and performed a detailed phenotypic analysis at different life cycle stages. The Pbstk2 knockout (KO) was not compromised in asexual blood stage propagation, transmission and development in the mosquito vector. T

SUBMITTER: Jillapalli R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6737972 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature