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Metabolism

Malaria parasite stands out

Nature volume 466, pages 702–703 (2010)Cite this article

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One of the hallmarks of cellular biochemistry is the ability to extract energy efficiently from available substrates. The malaria parasite, however, deviates from the norm, and has come up with its own solution.

All living organisms require energy for growth, maintenance and reproduction. At the cellular level, chemical reactions transform energy from one type to another: the energy stored in chemical bonds is turned into ATP — the cell's energy currency — when certain complex molecules are broken down to simpler ones. One such molecule is glucose, which is broken down through a sequence of pathways that lead to the generation of ATP. In this issue (page 774), Olszewski et al.1 show that the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium falciparum does not follow the usual route to generate ATP.

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Figure 1: Canonical intracellular metabolic pathways and those of Plasmodium falciparum.

References

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  1. Hagai Ginsburg is in the Department of Biological Chemistry, Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel. hagai.ginsburg@gmail.com,

    Hagai Ginsburg

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  1. Hagai Ginsburg
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Ginsburg, H. Malaria parasite stands out. Nature 466, 702–703 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/466702a

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