Université de Fribourg

Malaria infected red blood cells release small regulatory RNAs through extracellular vesicles

Babatunde, Kehinde Adebayo ; Mbagwu, Smart Ikechukwu ; Hernández-Castañeda, María Andrea ; Adapa, Swamy R. ; Walch, Michael ; Filgueira, Luis ; Falquet, Laurent ; Jiang, Rays H. Y. ; Ghiran, Ionita ; Mantel, Pierre-Yves

In: Scientific Reports, 2018, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 884

The parasite Plasmodium falciparum causes the most severe form of malaria. Cell communication between parasites is an important mechanism to control population density and differentiation. The infected red blood cells (iRBCs) release small extracellular vesicles (EVs) that transfer cargoes between cells. The EVs synchronize the differentiation of the asexual parasites into gametocytes to initiate...