Cationic amino acid transporters play key roles in the survival and transmission of apicomplexan parasites
Rajendran, Esther , Hapuarachchi, Sanduni V. , Miller, Catherine M. , Fairweather, Stephen J. , Cai, Yeping , Smith, Nicholas C., Cockburn, Ian A. , Bröer, Stefan , Kirk, Kiaran , and van Dooren, Giel G. (2017) Cationic amino acid transporters play key roles in the survival and transmission of apicomplexan parasites. Nature Communications, 8. 14455. pp. 1-13.
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Abstract
Apicomplexans are obligate intracellular parasites that scavenge essential nutrients from their hosts via transporter proteins on their plasma membrane. The identities of the transporters that mediate amino acid uptake into apicomplexans are unknown. Here we demonstrate that members of an apicomplexan-specific protein family—the Novel Putative Transporters (NPTs)—play key roles in the uptake of cationic amino acids. We show that an NPT from Toxoplasma gondii (TgNPT1) is a selective arginine transporter that is essential for parasite survival and virulence. We also demonstrate that a homologue of TgNPT1 from the malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei (PbNPT1), shown previously to be essential for the sexual gametocyte stage of the parasite, is a cationic amino acid transporter. This reveals a role for cationic amino acid scavenging in gametocyte biology. Our study demonstrates a critical role for amino acid transporters in the survival, virulence and life cycle progression of these parasites.
| Item ID: | 48103 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2041-1723 |
| Additional Information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. |
| Funders: | Australian Research Council (ARC), National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) |
| Projects and Grants: | ARC Discovery Grant DP150102883, NHMRC Project Grant 525428, ARC QEII Fellowship DP110103144 |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Apr 2017 00:22 |
| FoR Codes: | 32 BIOMEDICAL AND CLINICAL SCIENCES > 3207 Medical microbiology > 320704 Medical parasitology @ 100% |
| SEO Codes: | 97 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 970106 Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences @ 100% |
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