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Transgenic Fluorescent Plasmodium cynomolgi Liver Stages Enable Live Imaging and Purification of Malaria Hypnozoite-Forms |
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| Authors: | Annemarie Voorberg-van der Wel Anne-Marie Zeeman Sandra M van Amsterdam Alexander van den Berg Els J Klooster Shiroh Iwanaga Chris J Janse Geert-Jan van Gemert Robert Sauerwein Niels Beenhakker Gerrit Koopman Alan W Thomas Clemens H M Kocken |
| Institution: | 1. Biomedical Primate Research Centre, Department of Parasitology, Rijswijk, The Netherlands.; 2. Mie University, School of Medicine, Tsu, Japan.; 3. Leiden Malaria Research Group, Department of Parasitology, Leiden University Medical, Leiden, The Netherlands.; 4. Department of Medical Microbiology, University Medical Centre, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.; 5. Biomedical Primate Research Centre, Department of Virology, Rijswijk, The Netherlands.; Université Pierre et Marie Curie, France, |
| Abstract: | A major challenge for strategies to combat the human malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax is the presence of hypnozoites in the liver. These dormant forms can cause renewed clinical disease after reactivation through unknown mechanisms. The closely related non-human primate malaria P. cynomolgi is a frequently used model for studying hypnozoite-induced relapses. Here we report the generation of the first transgenic P. cynomolgi parasites that stably express fluorescent markers in liver stages by transfection with novel DNA-constructs containing a P. cynomolgi centromere. Analysis of fluorescent liver stages in culture identified, in addition to developing liver-schizonts, uninucleate persisting parasites that were atovaquone resistant but primaquine sensitive, features associated with hypnozoites. We demonstrate that these hypnozoite-forms could be isolated by fluorescence-activated cell sorting. The fluorescently-tagged parasites in combination with FACS-purification open new avenues for a wide range of studies for analysing hypnozoite biology and reactivation. |
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