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Host–pathogen

How does malaria’s blood-stage transcriptome unfold?

Bozdech Z, Llinás M, Pulliam BL, et al. · PLoS biology · 2003

Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC

Plasmodium falciparum’s 48-hour intraerythrocytic cycle was profiled hourly, revealing tightly staged gene-expression programs after RBC invasion.

Study at a glance

Design
Animal / in-vitro — Hourly IDC transcriptome of P. falciparum across the ~48-hour erythrocytic cycle
N
Time-series parasite culture transcriptome — no single sample N
Population
Plasmodium falciparum during the intraerythrocytic developmental cycle
Outcome
Stage-ordered periodic gene expression across the IDC

Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.

Key findings

Gene expression is highly periodic and stage-ordered across the IDC starting with merozoite invasion and parasitophorous vacuole formation.

Methodology

Measured the IDC transcriptome of P. falciparum at 1-hour resolution across the ~48-hour cycle from merozoite invasion through ring/trophozoite/schizont stages.

Limitations

Does not itself deliver a drug; focuses on blood-stage expression timing.

How this study connects

Role on claims

Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.

  • SupportsHost–pathogenconcept

    Multiple empirical papers in this library examine host–pathogen with mechanistic biological findings.

    Evidence for the claim as stated.

  • SupportsHost–pathogenconcept

    Gene expression is highly periodic and stage-ordered across the IDC starting with merozoite invasion and parasitophorous vacuole formation.

    Evidence for the claim as stated.

  • SupportsHost–pathogenconcept

    Systems and scales differ across host–pathogen studies (species, tissues, methods), so mechanisms should not be over-generalised.

    Evidence for the claim as stated.

  • Three papers are false-positive lexicon hits for proteomics. Naegleria fowleri work assembled an ~30 Mb AT-rich genome and listed candidate pathogenicity genes; Aspergillus comparative genomics reported ~29–36 Mb genomes with 9,113–13,553 genes (~20% Aspergillaceae-specific; section Nigri ~1,800 unique genes); Plasmodium falciparum IDC transcriptome was hourly expression across a ~48-hour blood-stage cycle. Those are DNA or RNA catalogues, not peptide spectra.

    Evidence for the claim as stated.

  • Naegleria and Aspergillus genomes and the Plasmodium IDC transcriptome should not be cited as mass-spectrometry evidence at all. Candidate pathogenicity gene lists and periodic RNA profiles are sequence resources that still need protein-level or infection-model tests.

    Evidence for the claim as stated.

Open questions

Tensions this paper is part of

From concept pages' “where studies disagree.” Disagreement means the same question; scope means different assays, populations, or outcomes.

Related papers in this topic

Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.