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Commitment to the production of male and female gametocytes in the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2001

F. SILVESTRINI ,
P. ALANO  and
J. L. WILLIAMS
F. SILVESTRINI
Affiliation:
Laboratorio di Biologia Cellulare, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Rome, Italy
P. ALANO
Affiliation:
Laboratorio di Biologia Cellulare, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Viale Regina Elena 299, 00161 Rome, Italy
J. L. WILLIAMS
Affiliation:
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Department of Entomology, Communicable Diseases and Immunology, Forest Glen Annex, Washington, DC, USA
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Abstract

Commitment to the production of female and male gametocytes was studied in the NF54 line of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. The development of sibling parasites derived from individual schizonts was followed, and 2 antisera against the female gametocyte-specific protein Pfg377 and the male gametocyte-specific protein α-tubulin II were used to determine the sex of sibling gametocytes. The experiment showed that individual cohorts of sibling gametocytes were stained in a mutually exclusive fashion by only one or the other antiserum, indicating that individual schizonts committed to yield sexual parasite progeny produce gametocytes of the same sex. This work suggests that in P. falciparum commitment to sexual differentiation occurs prior to schizont maturation, at the same moment when the sex of the resulting gametocytes is determined.

Keywords

Plasmodium falciparumsexual differentiationsex determinationgametocytogenesissex-specific antibodies
Type
Research Article
Information
Parasitology , Volume 121 , Issue 5 , November 2000 , pp. 465 - 471
Copyright
2000 Cambridge University Press

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