Yuan Jing's research group published a research paper in eLife, revealing the molecules of Plasmodium cell morphology control...

On July 18, Yuan Jing's research group published a research paper
titled Inner membrane complex proteomics reveals a palmitoylation regulation critical for intraerythrocytic development of malaria parasite in the journal eLife.

Protozoa-Plasmodium parasites are the causative pathogens of malaria infectious diseases, causing hundreds of millions of people to be infected and hundreds of thousands of deaths
each year.
Malaria parasites with infectious capacity are cell-polar, and polar cell morphology is critical
for the malaria parasite infection host.
There is a unique membrane organelle (IMC) under the plasma membrane (PM) of the top-compound portal parasite represented by the malaria parasite, ---which plays a key role
in the establishment and maintenance of polar cell morphology.
The previous work of the research group revealed the physiological function and molecular mechanism
of IMC regulation of the epidermal microtubule skeleton (The EMBO Journal, 2020) and Current Biology (2018).
However, the protein components of IMC organelles and their localization mechanisms remain unknown
.

This work binds protein proximity labeling and protein mass spectrometry methods to reveal the protein components
of the IMC organelles of Plasmodium.
Combined with bioinformatics analysis, a class of IMC-related intracellular vesicle transporters
was discovered.
This work provides important fundamental data for further elucidation of the molecular mechanisms by which IMC arises and sustains
.

The work also found that there are extensive palmitoylation modifications in IMC proteins, suggesting that IMC proteins achieve organelle-specific localization
through palmitoylation modifications.
Further work found that palmitoyltransferase DHHC2 was specifically expressed in IMC
.
DHHC2 is modified by palmitoylation to control cell localization and function of specific IMC proteins including CDPK1 and GAP45, thereby regulating the cell morphology and red blood cell invasion
of the malaria parasite.

PhD student Qian Pengge, postdoctoral student Wang Xu and Associate Professor Zhong Legend are the first authors of this paper; Professor Yuan Jing is the corresponding author of this article, and Xiamen University is the first to complete it
.
The research was funded
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the President's Fund of Xiamen University.

Links to the full paper: https://elifesciences.
org/articles/77447#content