ArticleJournal of structural biology2012
Soft X-ray microscopy analysis of cell volume and hemoglobin content in erythrocytes infected with asexual and sexual stages of Plasmodium falciparum.
Article in Journal of structural biology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 78 papers.
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Who cites it
78 citing papers in PubMed, 164 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Artificial intelligence-powered microscopy: Transforming the landscape of parasitology.Journal of microscopy · 2026Review
- The inducible gametocyte producer (iGP1) strain is well-suited to produce both immature and mature gametocytes for subsequent drug sensitivity profiling.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2026Article
- Interior soft x-ray tomography with sparse global sampling.Physica scripta · 2025Article
- Diagnostic performance of hemozoin-based magneto-optical detection assay and RDT: a prospective observational study.Pathogens and global health · 2025Observational
- Demonstrating soft X-ray tomography in the lab for correlative cryogenic biological imaging using X-rays and light microscopy.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Aspartyl protease inhibition interferes with Plasmodium falciparum asexual blood-stage and early gametocyte development.Malaria journal · 2025Article
- A scoping study of the whole-cell imaging literature: a foundational corpus, potential for mesoscale data synthesis, and implications for standardization of an emerging field.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Slow clearance of histidine-rich protein-2 in Gabonese with uncomplicated malaria.Microbiology spectrum · 2024Observational
- The Digestive Vacuole of the Malaria Parasite: A Specialized Lysosome.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Babesia, Theileria, Plasmodium and Hemoglobin.Microorganisms · 2022Article
- A protocol for full-rotation soft X-ray tomography of single cells.STAR protocols · 2022Article
- X-ray microscopy enables multiscale high-resolution 3D imaging of plant cells, tissues, and organs.Plant physiology · 2022Article
- Using soft X-ray tomography for rapid whole-cell quantitative imaging of SARS-CoV-2-infected cells.Cell reports methods · 2021Article
- Article
- Sensitive detection of Plasmodium vivax malaria by the rotating-crystal magneto-optical method in Thailand.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Protein Sorting in Plasmodium Falciparum.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Malaria Pigment Crystals: The Achilles' Heel of the Malaria Parasite.ChemMedChem · 2021Review
18 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Plasmodium falciparum, the most virulent agent of human malaria, undergoes both asexual cycling and sexual differentiation inside erythrocytes. As the intraerythrocytic parasite develops it increases in size and alters the permeability of the host cell plasma membrane. An intriguing question is: how is the integrity of the host erythrocyte maintained during the intraerythrocytic cycle? We have used water window cryo X-ray tomography to determine cell morphology and hemoglobin content at different stages of asexual and sexual differentiation. The cryo stabilization preserves native structure permitting accurate analyses of parasite and host cell volumes. Absorption of soft X-rays by protein adheres to Beer-Lambert's law permitting quantitation of the concentration of hemoglobin in the host cell compartment. During asexual development the volume of the parasite reaches about 50% of the uninfected erythrocyte volume but the infected erythrocyte volume remains relatively constant. The total hemoglobin content gradually decreases during the 48h cycle but its concentration remains constant until early trophozoite stage, decreases by 25%, then remains constant again until just prior to rupture. During early sexual development the gametocyte has a similar morphology to a trophozoite but then undergoes a dramatic shape change. Our cryo X-ray tomography analysis reveals that about 70% of the host cell hemoglobin is taken up and digested during gametocyte development and the parasite eventually occupies about 50% of the uninfected erythrocyte volume. The total volume of the infected erythrocyte remains constant, apart from some reversible shrinkage at stage IV, while the concentration of hemoglobin decreases to about 70% of that in an uninfected erythrocyte.
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