Drug-induced alterations in gene expression of the asexual blood forms of Plasmodium falciparum

The complete genome sequence of the malarial parasite, Plasmodium falciparum[Gardner, M.J., Hall, N., Fung, E., White, O., Berriman, M., and Hyman, R.W. (2002) Nature 419: 498-510; Hyman, R.W., Fung, E., Conway, A., Kurdi, O., Mao, J., Miranda, M. et al. (2002) Nature 419: 534-537], has provided researchers with the informational base for establishing genomic [Volkman, S.K., Hartl, D.L., Wirth, D.F., Nielsen, K.M., Choi, M., Batalov, S., et al. (2002) Science 298: 216-218], proteomic [Florens, L., Washburn, M.P.J.D.R., Anthony, R.M., Grainger, M., Haynes, J.D., et al. (2002) Nature 419: 520-526; Lasonder, E., Ishihama, Y., Anderson, J.S., Vermunt, A.M.W., Pain, A., Sauerwein, R.W., et al. (2002) Nature 419: 537-542] and genome-wide RNA expression [Ben Mamoun, C., Gluzman, I.Y., Hott, C., MacMillan, S.K., Amarakone, A.S., Anderson, D.L., et al. (2001) Mol Microbiol 39: 26-36; Hayward, R.E., Derisi, J.L., Alfadhli, S., Kaslow, D.C., Brown, P.O., and Rathod, P.K. (2000) Mol Microbiol 35: 6-14] analyses in this system. In fact, we have previously utilized SAGE (serial analysis of gene expression) to identify abundant loci that probably constitute part of the active metabolome [Patankar, S., Munasinghe, A., Shoaibi, A., Cummings, L.M., and Wirth, D.F. (2001) Mol Biol Cell 12: 3114-3125], as well as to characterize antisense transcription on a global scale in Plasmodium. In the present study, the comprehensive annotation of SAGE libraries derived from an asexual stage population exposed to drug and its matched control was used to assess the modulation of gene expression by chloroquine. Here, we observed a constellation of changes, with the differential regulation of over 100 transcripts, and have confirmed the data by alternate methods. A few responsive loci, including PfMDR1, have previously been implicated in the mechanism of chloroquine action/resistance. Several others, however, were derived from unexpected categories, including a large number of unknown open reading frames (ORFs), whose induction after drug exposure may provide first hints to their possible function.