bThe SYBR green I (SG) dye-based fluorescence assay for screening antimalarial compounds is based on direct quantitation of parasite DNA. We show that DNA-interacting cationic cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) and intercalating agents compete with SG dye to bind to DNA. Therefore, readouts of this assay, unlike those of the [ 3 H]hypoxanthine incorporation assay, for the antimalarial activity of the above DNA binding agents may be erroneous. In the case of CPPs, false readouts can be improved by the removal of excess peptides.
Malaria continues to be a major public health problem in the 21st century. More than 200 million cases of malaria were reported in 2012, and the emergence of new drug-resistant strains of Plasmodium makes the situation more critical and alarming (1, 2). Chemoresistance, drug monotherapies, the easy availability of substandard drugs, and genetic polymorphism are some of the major causes of parasite drug resistance (3, 4). Thus, it is imperative to identify new antimalarial agents. For antimalarial drug screening, the [ 3 H]hypoxanthine incorporation assay has been a gold standard (5), while parasite lactate dehydrogenase (pLDH)-(6) and histidine-rich protein II-based (7) assays are other widely used methods. However, these assays are expensive and involve multistep procedures and thus are difficult to utilize for highthroughput screening (8, 9). The SYBR green I (SG) dye-based fluorescence assay is a recently developed high-throughput screening method which has been reported to be as sensitive as the [ 3 H]hypoxanthine incorporation assay (8, 10). It has been extensively validated and compared with other known methods and is commonly used for high-throughput antimalarial drug screening (9,(11)(12)(13).Peptides and DNA intercalating agents have been widely tested for their antimalarial activity (14-17). Some cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs), e.g., TP10 (18), and a number of DNA intercalators have been shown to have antimalarial activity (16,17). Interestingly, it has been demonstrated that CPPs, like Tat, penetratin, and TP10, are efficient agents for the delivery of bioactive molecules across the plasma membrane barrier (19). It has also been shown that CPPs move to the nucleus and bind to the target DNA, forming peptide-DNA complexes (20, 21). Since SG dye, CPPs, and intercalating agents bind to DNA, the aim of the present study was to evaluate the suitability of an SG dye-based fluorescence assay for determining the antiplasmodial activity of DNA binding agents. CPPs, Tat, penetratin, TP10, P3, P8 (19,22), and control peptides (Table 1) were chemically synthesized (USV, Mumbai, India) with more than 95% purity. TP10 is a broad-spectrum antiparasitic CPP (18), while Tat has been shown to be nontoxic (at 50 M) to Plasmodium parasites (23). Synchronized Plasmodium falciparum 3D7 cultures at 2% parasitemia and 2% hematocrit were lysed (10) and treated with various concentrations (6.25 M to 100 M) of Tat, penetratin, TP10, and control peptides (control cyclic peptide [CP1] and control linear pe...