The life cycle of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is tightly regulated, oscillating between stages of intense proliferation and quiescence. Cyclic 48-hour asexual replication of Plasmodium is markedly different from cell division in higher eukaryotes, and mechanistically poorly understood. Here, we report tight synchronisation of malaria parasites during the early phases of the cell cycle by exposure to DL-α-difluoromethylornithine (DFMO), which results in the depletion of polyamines. This induces an inescapable cell cycle arrest in G1 (~15 hours post-invasion) by blocking G1/S transition. Cell cycle-arrested parasites enter a quiescent G0-like state but, upon addition of exogenous polyamines, re-initiate their cell cycle. This ability to halt malaria parasites at a specific point in their cell cycle, and to subsequently trigger re-entry into the cell cycle, provides a valuable framework to investigate cell cycle regulation in these parasites. We subsequently used gene expression analyses to show that re-entry into the cell cycle involves expression of Ca2+-sensitive (cdpk4 and pk2) and mitotic kinases (nima and ark2), with deregulation of the pre-replicative complex associated with expression of pk2. Changes in gene expression could be driven through transcription factors MYB1 and two ApiAP2 family members. This new approach to parasite synchronisation therefore expands our currently limited toolkit to investigate cell cycle regulation in malaria parasites.

Mitosis has been validated by numerous anti-cancer drugs as being a druggable process, and selective inhibition of parasite proliferation provides an obvious opportunity for therapeutic intervention against malaria. Mitosis is controlled through the interplay between several protein kinases and phosphatases. We show here that inhibitors of human mitotic kinases belonging to the Aurora family inhibit P. falciparum proliferation in vitro with various potencies, and that a genetic selection for mutant parasites resistant to one of the drugs, Hesperadin, identifies a resistance mechanism mediated by a member of a different kinase family, PfNek1 (PF3D7_1228300). Intriguingly, loss of PfNek1 catalytic activity provides protection against drug action. This points to an undescribed functional interaction between Ark and Nek kinases and shows that existing inhibitors can be used to validate additional essential and druggable kinase functions in the parasite.

The life cycle of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is tightly regulated, oscillating between stages of intense proliferation and quiescence. Cyclic 48-hour asexual replication of Plasmodium is markedly different from cell division in higher eukaryotes, and mechanistically poorly understood. Here, we report tight synchronisation of malaria parasites during the early phases of its cell cycle by exposure to DL-α-difluoromethylornithine (DFMO), which results in the depletion of polyamines. This induces an inescapable cell cycle arrest in G 1 (~15 hours post-invasion) by blocking G 1 /S transition. Cell cycle-arrested parasites enter a quiescent G 0 -like state but, upon addition of exogenous polyamines, re-initiate their cell cycle in a coordinated fashion. This ability to halt malaria parasites at a specific point in their cell cycle, and to subsequently trigger re-entry into the cell cycle, provides a valuable framework to investigate cell cycle regulation in these parasites. We therefore used gene expression analyses to show that re-entry into the cell cycle involves expression of Ca 2+ -sensitive (cdpk4 and pk2) and mitotic kinases (nima and ark2), with deregulation of the pre-replicative complex associated with expression of pk2. Changes in gene expression could be driven through transcription factors MYB1 and two ApiAP2 family members. This new approach to parasite synchronisation therefore expands our currently limited toolkit to investigate cell cycle regulation in malaria parasites.