Role of Calcium Signaling in the Transcriptional Regulation of the Apicoplast Genome of Plasmodium falciparum
Figure 1
Transcriptional response of P. falciparum schizonts to calcium ionophores, ionomycin, and A23187. (a) Total 975 and 558 genes were downregulated and 1279 and 202 upregulated by >2-fold by A23187 and ionomycin, respectively. The heatmaps show relative mRNA levels in each time point compared to the corresponding time point in the untreated cells. The color code corresponds to ratios mRNA abundance between the treatment and untreated controls. The vast majority of the genes show a gradual change throughout the 6-hour treatment time courses (materials and methods) with the exception of a small gene cluster that showed much rapid decrease in mRNA abundance in both inhibitor treatments (). (b) Pearson correlation between the treatment time points and the reference IDC transcriptome revealed that A23187 caused a developmental arrest of the P. falciparum development at 30 hours after invasion (hpi) (early schizont stage). In contrast, the ionomycin treated parasites exhibit expected progress through 6-hour treatment, from 32 to 38 hpi, hence indicating no developmental arrest by this inhibitor. (c) The heatmap shows relative mRNA expression level of the apicoplast genome coding genes.
