Protein O-Fucosyltransferase Is Required for the Efficient Invasion of Hepatocytes by Plasmodium berghei Sporozoites.
Pratik Narain SrivastavaPlabita PaulSatish MishraPublished in: ACS infectious diseases (2024)
The O-fucosylation of the thrombospondin type I repeat (TSR) domain is important for TSR-containing proteins' optimal folding and stability. However, the importance of Plasmodium O-fucosyltransferase 2 (POFut2) remains unclear due to two different reports. Here, we disrupted the POFut2 gene in Plasmodium berghei and demonstrated that POFut2 KO parasites develop normally in blood and mosquito stages but show reduced infectivity in mice. We found that the reduced infectivity of POFut2 KO sporozoites was due to a diminished level of TRAP that affected the parasite gliding motility and hepatocyte infectivity. Using all-atom MD simulation, we also hypothesize that O-fucosylation impacts the TSR domain's stability more than its heparin binding capacity.
Keyphrases
- plasmodium falciparum
- molecular dynamics
- liver injury
- copy number
- binding protein
- venous thromboembolism
- genome wide
- biofilm formation
- single molecule
- molecular dynamics simulations
- pseudomonas aeruginosa
- emergency department
- dengue virus
- growth factor
- escherichia coli
- gene expression
- skeletal muscle
- virtual reality
- insulin resistance
- amino acid
- zika virus
- resting state
- wild type
- life cycle