Alternative splicing is required for stage differentiation in malaria parasites
Abstract
In multicellular organisms, alternative splicing is central to tissue differentiation and identity. Unicellular protists lack multicellular tissue but differentiate into variable cell types during their life cycles. The role of alternative splicing in transitions between cell types and establishing cellular identity is currently unknown in any unicellular organism. To test whether alternative splicing in unicellular protists plays a role in cellular differentiation, we conduct RNA-seq to compare splicing in female and male sexual stages to asexual intraerythrocytic stages in the rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei. We find extensive changes in alternative splicing between stages and a role for alternative splicing in sexual differentiation. Previously, general gametocyte differentiation was shown to be modulated by specific transcription factors. Here, we show that alternative splicing establishes a subsequent layer of regulation, controlling genes relating to consequent sex-specific differentiation of gametocytes. We demonstrate that alternative splicing is reprogrammed during cellular differentiation of a unicellular protist. Disruption of an alternative splicing factor, PbSR-MG, perturbs sex-specific alternative splic...Continue Reading
References
featureCounts: an efficient general purpose program for assigning sequence reads to genomic features
Citations
Full-Length Transcriptome Analysis of Plasmodium falciparum by Single-Molecule Long-Read Sequencing.
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Alternative splicing
Alternative splicing a regulated gene expression process that allows a single genetic sequence to code for multiple proteins. Here is that latest research.