A mevalonate bypass system facilitates elucidation of apicoplast biology in malaria parasites
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ABSTRACT:
PROVIDER: PRJNA561421 | ENA |
REPOSITORIES: ENA
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Project description:Malaria parasites rely on a plastid organelle for survival during the blood stages of infection. However, the entire organelle is dispensable as long as the isoprenoid precursor isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP) is supplemented in the culture medium. We engineered parasites to produce isoprenoid precursors from a mevalonate-dependent pathway, creating a parasite line that replicates normally after the loss of the apicoplast organelle. We show that carbon-labeled mevalonate is specifically incorporated into isoprenoid products, opening new avenues for researching this essential class of metabolites in malaria parasites. We also show that essential apicoplast proteins, such as the enzyme target of the drug fosmidomycin, can be deleted in this mevalonate bypass parasite line, providing a method to determine the roles of other important apicoplast-resident proteins. Several antibacterial drugs kill malaria parasites because they target basic processes, such as transcription, in the organelle. We used metabolomic and transcriptomic methods to characterize parasite metabolism after azithromycin treatment triggered loss of the apicoplast. These results provide insight into the effects of apicoplast-disrupting drugs, several of which have been used to treat malaria infections in humans. Overall, the mevalonate bypass system provides a way to probe essential aspects of apicoplast biology and study the effects of drugs that target apicoplast processes.
2020-02-11 | GSE136169 | GEO
Project description:Malaria parasites rely on a plastid organelle for survival during the blood stages of infection. However, the entire organelle is dispensable as long as the isoprenoid precursor, isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP), is supplemented in the culture medium. We engineered parasites to produce isoprenoid precursors from a mevalonate-dependent pathway, creating a parasite line that replicates normally after the loss of the apicoplast organelle. We show that carbon-labeled mevalonate is specifically incorporated into isoprenoid products, opening new avenues for researching this essential class of metabolites in malaria parasites. We also show that essential apicoplast proteins, such as the enzyme target of the drug fosmidomycin, can be deleted in this mevalonate bypass parasite line, providing a new method to determine the roles of other important apicoplast-resident proteins. Several antibacterial drugs kill malaria parasites by targeting basic processes, such as transcription, in the organelle. We used metabolomic and transcriptomic methods to characterize parasite metabolism after azithromycin treatment triggered loss of the apicoplast and found that parasite metabolism and the production of apicoplast proteins is largely unaltered. These results provide insight into the effects of apicoplast-disrupting drugs, several of which have been used to treat malaria infections in humans. Overall, the mevalonate bypass system provides a way to probe essential aspects of apicoplast biology and study the effects of drugs that target apicoplast processes.
| S-EPMC7046295 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The apicoplast of Plasmodium falciparum parasites is believed to rely on the import of three-carbon phosphate compounds for use in organelle anabolic pathways, in addition to the generation of energy and reducing power within the organelle. We generated a series of genetic deletions in an apicoplast metabolic bypass line to determine which genes involved in apicoplast carbon metabolism are required for blood-stage parasite survival and organelle maintenance. We were able to demonstrate that pyruvate kinase II (PyrKII), the sole predicted source of pyruvate and NTPs within the apicoplast, is essential for organelle maintenance. However, deletions within apicoplast pathways that metabolize pyruvate did not result in organelle disruption, indicating that NTPs generated by PyrKII are the products required for this process. Enzymatic characterization of PyrKII revealed that it was active against all NDPs and dNDPs tested with broad substrate specificity, suggesting that it may be capable of generating any and all NTPs and dNTPs within the organelle. Conditional mislocalization of PyrKII resulted in a decrease in transcript levels within the apicoplast that preceded organelle disruption, suggesting that PyrKII is required for organelle maintenance due to its role in nucleotide triphosphate generation within the apicoplast.
2020-07-31 | GSE136688 | GEO
Project description:In the context of artemisinin resistance, the objective of the project was to evaluate the role of apicoplast and mitochondrion pathways during the parasite quiescent state induced by dihydroartemisinin (DHA) treatment. We performed gene expression profiling analysis using data obtained from RNA-seq of artemisinin-resistant parasites in two conditions: DHA treatment or DMSO treatment (as control condition) at the ring stage (obtained by D-sorbitol synchronization).
2024-10-16 | GSE207610 | GEO
Project description:Tetracyclines are effective but slow-acting antimalarial drugs whose mechanism of action remains uncertain. To characterize the antimalarial mechanism of tetracyclines, we evaluated their stage-specific activities, impacts on parasite transcription, and effects on two predicted organelle targets, the apicoplast and the mitochondrion, in cultured Plasmodium falciparum. Antimalarial effects were much greater after two 48-h life cycles than after one cycle, even if the drugs were removed at the end of the first cycle. Doxycycline-treated parasites appeared morphologically normal until late in the second cycle of treatment but failed to develop into merozoites. Doxycycline specifically impaired the expression of apicoplast genes. Apicoplast morphology initially appeared normal in the presence of doxycycline. However, apicoplasts were abnormal in the progeny of doxycycline-treated parasites, as evidenced by a block in apicoplast genome replication, a lack of processing of an apicoplast-targeted protein, and failure to elongate and segregate during schizogeny. Replication of the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes and mitochondrial morphology appeared normal. Our results demonstrate that tetracyclines specifically block expression of the apicoplast genome, resulting in the distribution of nonfunctional apicoplasts into daughter merozoites. The loss of apicoplast function in the progeny of treated parasites leads to a slow but potent antimalarial effect. We analyzed a series of 12 microarrays covering 55 hours of Plasmodium falciparum treated with doxycycline and 12 microarrays covering the same 55 hours with no doxycycline treatment
2010-07-01 | E-GEOD-5267 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Tetracyclines are effective but slow-acting antimalarial drugs whose mechanism of action remains uncertain. To characterize the antimalarial mechanism of tetracyclines, we evaluated their stage-specific activities, impacts on parasite transcription, and effects on two predicted organelle targets, the apicoplast and the mitochondrion, in cultured Plasmodium falciparum. Antimalarial effects were much greater after two 48-h life cycles than after one cycle, even if the drugs were removed at the end of the first cycle. Doxycycline-treated parasites appeared morphologically normal until late in the second cycle of treatment but failed to develop into merozoites. Doxycycline specifically impaired the expression of apicoplast genes. Apicoplast morphology initially appeared normal in the presence of doxycycline. However, apicoplasts were abnormal in the progeny of doxycycline-treated parasites, as evidenced by a block in apicoplast genome replication, a lack of processing of an apicoplast-targeted protein, and failure to elongate and segregate during schizogeny. Replication of the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes and mitochondrial morphology appeared normal. Our results demonstrate that tetracyclines specifically block expression of the apicoplast genome, resulting in the distribution of nonfunctional apicoplasts into daughter merozoites. The loss of apicoplast function in the progeny of treated parasites leads to a slow but potent antimalarial effect. Keywords: Plasmodium falciparum treated with Doxycycline
2006-07-11 | GSE5267 | GEO
Project description:Simvastatin has been widely used for treatment of hypercholesterolemia due to its ability to inhibit HMG-CoA reductase, the rate limiting enzyme of de novo cholesterol synthesis via mevalonate pathway. Its inhibitory action causes also depletion of pathway intermediates, farnesyl pyrophosphate (FPP) and geranyl-geranyl pyrophosphate (GGPP), which are inevitable for proper targeting of small GTPases (e.g. Ras proteins) to their site of action. We profiled by array the gene expression of MIA PaCa-2 cells treated with simvastatin, FPP, GGPP and their combinations. The inhibitory effect of statins on GFP-K-Ras protein trafficking were partially prevented by addition of the mevalonate pathway intermediates. We conclude that the anticancer effect of simvastatin is to a large extent mediated through isoprenoid intermediates of the mevalonate pathway.
2018-03-31 | E-MTAB-3263 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:Isoprenoids are a class of ubiquitous organic molecules synthesized from the five-carbon starter unit isopentenyl pyrophosphate (IPP). Comprising more than 30,000 known natural products, isoprenoids serve various important biological functions in many organisms. In bacteria, undecaprenyl pyrophosphate is absolutely required for the formation of cell wall peptidoglycan and other cell surface structures, while ubiquinones and menaquinones, both containing an essential prenyl moiety, are key electron carriers in respiratory energy generation. There is scant knowledge on the nature and regulation of bacterial isoprenoid pathways. In order to explore the cellular responses to perturbations in the mevalonate pathway, responsible for producing the isoprenoid precursor IPP in many Gram-positive bacteria and eukaryotes, we constructed three strains of Staphylococcus aureus in which each of the mevalonate pathway genes is regulated by an IPTG inducible promoter. We used DNA microarrays to profile the transcriptional effects of downregulating the components of the mevalonate pathway in S. aureus and demonstrate that decreased expression of the mevalonate pathway leads to widespread downregulation of primary metabolism genes, an upregulation in virulence factors and cell wall biosynthetic determinants, and surprisingly little compensatory expression in other isoprenoid biosynthetic genes. We subsequently correlate these transcriptional changes with downstream metabolic consequences. We used microarrays to profile the transcriptional changes incurred when downregulating mvaS, mvaA, or mvaK in S. aureus. Keywords: stress response S. aureus mutants were generated in which mvaS, mvaA, or mvaK were placed under control of the IPTG-inducible Pspac promoter. These mutants, as well as wildtype RN4220 S. aureus, were grown with or without 1 mM IPTG, harvested in exponential phase, and their total RNA was extracted and hybridized to Affymetrix GeneChips. Experiments were done in triplicate.
2010-05-05 | E-GEOD-13424 | biostudies-arrayexpress
Project description:We have discovered that loss of wild-type p53 correlates with elevated expression of mevalonate pathway genes in murine liver cancer and in human tumors. Mechanistically p53 blocks activation of SREBP-2, the master transcriptional regulator of this pathway, by transcriptionally inducing the ABCA1 cholesterol transporter gene, which inhibits SREBP-2 maturation. In mice the increase in mevalonate gene expression occurs in premalignant p53-null hepatocytes at a stage when p53 is needed to actively suppress tumorigenesis. Either RNAi mediated suppression of key genes in the mevalonate pathway or pharmacological inhibition of its rate-limiting enzyme restricts the development of mouse hepatocellular carcinomas driven by p53 loss. Conversely, like p53 loss, ablation of ABCA1 promotes tumorigenesis in a murine model and is associated with increased SREBP-2 maturation. Our findings thereby demonstrate that repression of the mevalonate pathway is a crucial component of p53-mediated tumor suppression and outline the mechanism by which this occurs.
2018-10-23 | GSE121558 | GEO
Project description:Metastasis is an important factor affecting the prognosis and survival of bladder cancer (BLCA) patients. Our previous study found that the mevalonate pathway is associated with the migratory ability of bladder cancer cells, but the exact mechanism is unclear. Here, we found that BLCA patients with mevalonate pathway activation had a poorer prognosis. Inhibition of the mevalonate pathway (simvastatin or zoledronic acid) resulted in a significant decrease in the migratory ability of BLCA cells. Therefore, we used proteomics to detect simvastatin- or zoledronic acid-treated BLCA cells to explore the effect of the mevalonate pathway on key proteins in BLCA cells.
2024-09-09 | PXD048067 |