Transgenic Plasmodium falciparum blood stage parasites F12/GDV1-GFP-DD: control (-Shield-1;F12/GDV1-GFP-DDOFF) vs GDV1-overexpressing (+Shield-1;F12/GDV1-GFP-DDON) parasites

Transcriptional profiling of transgenic P. falciparum blood stage parasites expressing an ectopic copy of GDV1-GFP-DD (F12/GDV1-GFP-DD). The DD (FKBP destabilisation domain) allows for the conditional expression of fusion proteins: DD fusion proteins are rapidly degraded or stably expressed in absence or presence of the stabilising ligand Shield-1, respectively (Banaszynski LA, Chen LC, Maynard-Smith LA, Ooi AG, Wandless TJ. A rapid, reversible, and tunable method to regulate protein function in living cells using synthetic small molecules.Cell. 2006 Sep 8;126(5):995-1004). The goal of this experiment was to identify genes differentially expressed in response to induced GDV1 overexpression. P. falciparum clone F12 parasites carrying the pHcam_GDV1-GFP-DD episome were grown in presence of 4nM WR (F12/GDV1-GFP-DDOFF) or 4nM WR/312nM Shield-1 (F12/GDV1-GFP-DDON). RNA extracted from these samples at seven consecutive time points each was processed for microarray analysis.