Characterization of Apicomplexan Amino Acid Transporters (ApiATs) in the Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum
Jan Stephan Wichers, Carolina van Gelder, Gwendolin Fuchs, Julia Mareike Ruge, Emma Pietsch, Josie L. Ferreira, Soraya Safavi, Heidrun von Thien, Paul-Christian Burda, Paolo Mesén-Ramirez, Tobias Spielmann, Jan Strauss, Tim-Wolf Gilberger, Anna Bachmann
Abstract
Malaria parasites live and multiply inside cells. To facilitate their extremely fast intracellular proliferation, they hijack and transform their host cells. This also requires the active uptake of nutrients, such as amino acids, from the host cell and the surrounding environment through various membranes that are the consequence of the parasite's intracellular lifestyle. In this paper, we focus on a family of putative amino acid transporters termed ApiAT. We show expression and localization of four transporters in the parasite plasma membrane of Plasmodium falciparum-infected erythrocytes that represent one interface of the pathogen to its host cell. We probed into the impact of functional inactivation of individual transporters on parasite growth in asexual and sexual blood stages of P. falciparum and reveal that only two of them show a modest but significant reduction in parasite proliferation but no impact on gametocytogenesis, pointing toward dispensability within this transporter family.