Ribosome Profiling in P. falciparum asexual blood stages

The description of the transcriptome and proteome datasets of Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest strain of human malaria, has been a tremendous resource for the understanding of the molecular physiology of this parasite. However, the underlying translational control that links global measurements of steady-state mRNA with protein levels is not well understood. Our work bridges this disconnect by measuring translation on a whole genome scale using ribosome profiling, providing the first measurements of new protein synthesis through the asexual blood phase developmental cycle. Cultures corresponding to ring, early trophozoite, late trophozoite, schizont stage, merozoite were harvested for both mRNA and polysome isolation using cycloheximide to freeze ribosomes in place.