Divergent Plasmodium actin residues are essential for filament localization, mosquito salivary gland invasion and malaria transmission.

ABSTRACT: Actin is one of the most conserved and ubiquitous proteins in eukaryotes. Its sequence has been highly conserved for its monomers to self-assemble into filaments that mediate essential cell functions such as trafficking, cell shape and motility. The malaria-causing parasite, Plasmodium, expresses a highly sequence divergent actin that is critical for its rapid motility at different stages within its mammalian and mosquito hosts. Each of Plasmodium actin's four subdomains have divergent regions compared to canonical vertebrate actins. We previously identified subdomains 2 and 3 as providing critical contributions for parasite actin function as these regions could not be replaced by subdomains of vertebrate actins. Here we probed the contributions of individual divergent amino acid residues

SUBMITTER: Yee M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9439217 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature