Expression data of gene knockout Plasmodium falciparum clones

The variant antigen, Plasmodium falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1), expressed on the surface of P. falciparum infected Red Blood Cells (iRBCs) is a critical virulence factor for malaria. Each parasite encodes 60 antigenically distinct var genes encoding PfEMP1s, but during infection the clonal parasite population expresses only one gene at a time before switching to the expression of a new variant antigen as an immune evasion mechanism to avoid the host’s antibody responses. The mechanism by which 59 of the 60 var genes are silenced remains largely unknown. We used microarrays to detail the global programme changes of gene expression caused by each gene knockout with a particular view towards which gene knockout results in transcriptional upregulation of the entire var gene family. Plasmodium falciparum clones, in each of which one of different histone lysine methylation modification enzyme genes was knocked out, were synchronized in the asexual stage and collected at indicated time points post invasion of erythrocytes for RNA extraction and hybridization on Affymetrix microarrays. We sought to identify the key epigenetic enzyme that controls silencing of the whole var gene family.