Analysis of the Plasmodium and Anopheles transcriptional repertoire during ookinete development and midgut invasion

Plasmodium, the causative agent of malaria, has to undergo sexual differentiation and development in anopheline mosquitoes for transmission to occur. To isolate genes specifically induced in both organisms during the early stages of Plasmodium differentiation in the mosquito, two cDNA libraries were constructed, one enriched for sequences expressed in differentiating Plasmodium berghei ookinetes and another enriched for sequences expressed in Anopheles stephensi guts containing invading ookinetes and early oocysts. Sequencing of 457 ookinete library clones and 652 early oocyst clones represented 175 and 346 unique expressed sequence tags, respectively. Nine of 13 Plasmodium and four of the five Anopheles novel expressed sequence tags analyzed on Northern blots were induced during ookinete differentiation and mosquito gut invasion. Ancaspase-7, an Anopheles effector caspase, is proteolytically activated during Plasmodium invasion of the midgut. WARP, a gene encoding a Plasmodium surface protein with a von Willebrand factor A-like adhesive domain, is expressed only in ookinetes and early oocysts. An anti-WARP polyclonal antibody strongly inhibits (70-92%) Plasmodium development in the mosquito, making it a candidate antigen for transmission blocking vaccines. The present results and those of an accompanying report (Srinivasan, P., Abraham, E. G., Ghosh, A. K., Valenzuela, J., Ribeiro, J. M. C., Dimopoulos G., Kafatos, F. C., Adams, J. H., and Jacobs-Lorena, M. (2004) J. Biol. Chem. 279, 5581-5587) provide the foundation for further analysis of Plasmodium differentiation in the mosquito and of mosquito responses to the parasite.