P. vivax schizont-stage transcriptomes from Peru and Papua New Guinea

The Plasmodium vivax reticulocyte invasion process is still poorly understood, with only a few receptor-ligand interactions identified to date. Individuals with the Southeast Asian ovalocytosis (SAO) phenotype have a deletion in the band 3 protein on the surface of erythrocytes, and are reported to have a lower incidence of clinical P. vivax malaria. In this study, we combined functional ex vivo invasion assays in SAO reticulocytes and transcriptome sequencing to uncover a band 3-mediated invasion pathway in P. vivax and potential band 3 ligands.Schizont-stage isolates from Peru (n=13) and Papua New Guinea (n=3) were mRNA-sequenced, and a high transcriptional variability was observed in multigene and invasion-related families. Transcriptomes of isolates with low or high dependency on band 3 for invasion (n=9, Peru) were compared by differential expression analysis, which produced a list of band 3 ligand candidates with high representation of PvTRAg genes.