Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Biomedical Chemistry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
  • 2 Department of Biomedical Chemistry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; Department of Pathobiology and Medical Diagnostics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Sabah, Malaysia; Borneo Medical and Health Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Sabah, Malaysia; Graduate School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan. Electronic address: ukssato@gmail.com
  • 3 Department of Biomedical Chemistry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; Graduate School of Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan; Department of Host-Defense Biochemistry, Institute of Tropical Medicine (NEKKEN), Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan
Parasitol Int, 2019 Apr;69:99-102.
PMID: 30543864 DOI: 10.1016/j.parint.2018.12.003

Abstract

The growth and the survival of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum are critically dependent on the functions of the two organelles - the mitochondrion and the apicoplast. However, these two organelles have been known to be difficult to separate from each other when they are released from Plasmodium cell. We have been searching for the conditions with which separation of the mitochondrion and the apicoplast is achieved. In this study, we investigated how the two organelle's separation is affected when the pressure of the nitrogen gas to disrupt the Plasmodium cells by nitrogen cavitation method is lowered from the pressure regularly applied (1200 psi). The parasite cell was sufficiently disrupted even when nitrogen cavitation was carried out at 300 psi. The obtained mitochondrial sample was much less contaminated by DNA compared with the sample prepared using the gas at the regular pressure. After the fractionation by Percoll density gradient, the mitochondrion and the apicoplast from the 300 psi cell lysate exhibited different separation profiles. This is the first experimental evidence that indicates the mitochondrion and the apicoplast of P. falciparum are separable from each other.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.