ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America1998
Nuclear-encoded proteins target to the plastid in Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium falciparum.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 1998. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 224 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
224 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 701 citations in OpenAlex.
- Metabolites from Marine Sponges and Their Potential to Treat Malarial Protozoan Parasites Infection: A Systematic Review.Marine drugs · 2021Pooled it
- A cytoskeleton-associated Plasmodium protein critical for organelle segregation.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Transporters, an important but poorly studied area of Toxoplasma gondii.Parasites & vectors · 2026Review
- Toxoplasmosis: Epidemiological Significance, Economic Burden, and Emerging Directions in Drug Discovery and Artificial Intelligence.International journal of microbiology · 2026Review
- A P5-ATPase, TgFLP12, diverging from plant chloroplast lipid transporters mediates apicoplast fatty export in Toxoplasma.Nature communications · 2025Article
- A Plasmodium LARC GAP provides preerythrocytic, stage and species transcending protection in mice.NPJ vaccines · 2025Article
- An endoplasmic reticulum localized acetyl-CoA transporter is required for efficient fatty acid synthesis inOpen biology · 2024Article
- A pyruvate transporter in the apicoplast of apicomplexan parasites.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- The acyl-CoA synthetasemBio · 2024Article
- TheeLife · 2024Article
- Characterisation of the OTU domain deubiquitinase complement ofLife science alliance · 2023Article
- An essential endoplasmic reticulum-resident N-acetyltransferase ortholog in Plasmodium falciparum.Journal of cell science · 2023Article
- Protein kinases on carbon metabolism: potential targets for alternative chemotherapies against toxoplasmosis.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2023Review
- Two apicoplast dwelling glycolytic enzymes provide key substrates for metabolic pathways in the apicoplast and are critical for Toxoplasma growth.PLoS pathogens · 2022Article
- Mining Fatty Acid Biosynthesis for New Antimicrobials.Annual review of microbiology · 2022Review
- Culture on Selective Media and Amplicon-Based Sequencing of 16S rRNA from Spontaneous Brain Abscess-the View from the Diagnostic Laboratory.Microbiology spectrum · 2022Article
- The flexibility of Apicomplexa parasites in lipid metabolism.PLoS pathogens · 2022Review
- Article
- Toxoplasmosis: Current and Emerging Parasite Druggable Targets.Microorganisms · 2021Review
164 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A vestigial, nonphotosynthetic plastid has been identified recently in protozoan parasites of the phylum Apicomplexa. The apicomplexan plastid, or "apicoplast," is indispensable, but the complete sequence of both the Plasmodium falciparum and Toxoplasma gondii apicoplast genomes has offered no clue as to what essential metabolic function(s) this organelle might perform in parasites. To investigate possible functions of the apicoplast, we sought to identify nuclear-encoded genes whose products are targeted to the apicoplast in Plasmodium and Toxoplasma. We describe here nuclear genes encoding ribosomal proteins S9 and L28 and the fatty acid biosynthetic enzymes acyl carrier protein (ACP), beta-ketoacyl-ACP synthase III (FabH), and beta-hydroxyacyl-ACP dehydratase (FabZ). These genes show high similarity to plastid homologues, and immunolocalization of S9 and ACP verifies that the proteins accumulate in the plastid. All the putatively apicoplast-targeted proteins bear N-terminal presequences consistent with plastid targeting, and the ACP presequence is shown to be sufficient to target a recombinant green fluorescent protein reporter to the apicoplast in transgenic T. gondii. Localization of ACP, and very probably FabH and FabZ, in the apicoplast implicates fatty acid biosynthesis as a likely function of the apicoplast. Moreover, inhibition of P. falciparum growth by thiolactomycin, an inhibitor of FabH, indicates a vital role for apicoplast fatty acid biosynthesis. Because the fatty acid biosynthesis genes identified here are of a plastid/bacterial type, and distinct from those of the equivalent pathway in animals, fatty acid biosynthesis is potentially an excellent target for therapeutics directed against malaria, toxoplasmosis, and other apicomplexan-mediated diseases.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.