Transcriptome of Plasmodium berghei wildtype parasites and KIN knockout parasites [RNA-seq]

The ability to sense, respond and adapt to changes in nutrient availability is a survival requisite. This might be particularly important for malaria parasites, which encounter major alterations in nutrients levels throughout infection. How these parasites deal with nutrient fluctuations and maintain infection without killing their hosts before transmission remains unknown. Here, we show that blood-stage malaria parasites respond to dietary-restriction through a rearrangement of their transcriptome accompanied by a significant reduction in their multiplication rate. A kinome analysis combined with chemical and genetic approaches identified KIN, a putative AMP-activated kinase homologue, as a master regulator that senses host nutrients both in vitro and in vivo, and mediates the transcriptional response to the host nutritional status. Diet-responsive genes include the plant-like ApiAP2 transcription regulators, which appear to act as downstream effectors of KIN. Overall, these findings reveal key components of a parasite nutrient-sensing mechanism that is critical to modulate replication and virulence in malaria parasites. Transcriptome alterations under dietary-restrictions in wildtype and KIN knockout parasites (3 biological replicates of each condition).