Proteome of the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei liver stage merosomes

We use the Plasmodium berghei rodent model to characterize the proteome of the final phase of liver stage development, the merosomes, packets of hepatic merozoites that bud from the host hepatocyte to initiate the blood stage of malaria. Plasmodium berghei WT ANKA strain was used to infect HepG2 hepatoma cells. Samples were fractionated by strong cation exchange, and nano-LC Orbitrap mass spectrometry was used to perform untargeted proteomic profiling of 3 biological replicates. Data was processed using MaxQuant and LFQ. Additional searches were performed to identify peptides from cleaved acetylated PEXELs (protein export elements) to identify proteins putatively exported to the host hepatocyte during liver stage development.