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Molecular and Cellular Biology, June 2006, p. 4074-4085, Vol. 26, No. 11
0270-7306/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/MCB.00095-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Genesis of and Trafficking to the Maurer's Clefts of Plasmodium falciparum-Infected Erythrocytes{dagger}

Cornelia Spycher,1 Melanie Rug,2 Nectarios Klonis,3 David J. P. Ferguson,4 Alan F. Cowman,2 Hans-Peter Beck,1 and Leann Tilley3*

Department of Medical Parasitology and Infection Biology, Swiss Tropical Institute, Socinstrasse 57, CH 4002 Basel, Switzerland,1 The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, 1G Royal Parade, Parkville, Melbourne 3050,2 Department of Biochemistry and ARC Centre of Excellence for Coherent X-Ray Science, La Trobe University, Melbourne 3086, Victoria, Australia,3 Nuffield Department of Pathology, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford OX3 9DU, United Kingdom4

Received 16 January 2006/ Returned for modification 15 February 2006/ Accepted 4 March 2006

Malaria parasites export proteins beyond their own plasma membrane to locations in the red blood cells in which they reside. Maurer's clefts are parasite-derived structures within the host cell cytoplasm that are thought to function as a sorting compartment between the parasite and the erythrocyte membrane. However, the genesis of this compartment and the signals directing proteins to the Maurer's clefts are not known. We have generated Plasmodium falciparum-infected erythrocytes expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) chimeras of a Maurer's cleft resident protein, the membrane-associated histidine-rich protein 1 (MAHRP1). Chimeras of full-length MAHRP1 or fragments containing part of the N-terminal domain and the transmembrane domain are successfully delivered to Maurer's clefts. Other fragments remain trapped within the parasite. Fluorescence photobleaching and time-lapse imaging techniques indicate that MAHRP1-GFP is initially trafficked to isolated subdomains in the parasitophorous vacuole membrane that appear to represent nascent Maurer's clefts. The data suggest that the Maurer's clefts bud from the parasitophorous vacuole membrane and diffuse within the erythrocyte cytoplasm before taking up residence at the cell periphery.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biochemistry, La Trobe University, Melbourne 3086, Australia. Phone: 61-3-94791375. Fax: 61-3-94792467. E-mail: L.Tilley{at}latrobe.edu.au.

{dagger} Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://mcb.asm.org/.

Molecular and Cellular Biology, June 2006, p. 4074-4085, Vol. 26, No. 11
0270-7306/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/MCB.00095-06
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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