BioMalPar
Date:
The Malaria Cell Atlas
Single-cell RNA sequencing has revolutionised our understanding of the cellular networks underpinning developmental trajectories in single mammalian cells. The transcriptomes of unicellular eukaryotes are comparatively understudied. However, unicellular eukaryotes such as malaria parasites are responsible for a high degree of mortality and morbidity, causing 200 million cases, and leading to half a million deaths per year. The malaria parasite has a complex digenic lifecycle in the mosquito vector and the mammalian host. It is known that genes responsible for disease progression and transmission are variably expressed in a population of parasites. Understanding the expression of genes over the course of the lifecycle will be critical to the identification of drug and vaccine targets.
Recently, we have developed a scRNA-seq method for profiling the parasite life-cycle stages present in human blood. We have extended this method to profile, for the first time, single-cell transcriptomes covering all of the rodent malaria parasite, P. berghei, life cycle stages, both in the mosquito and the mammalian host. In total, we have profiled thousands of individual parasite cells, and identified genes that are differentially expressed across these stages, and variably expressed at a particular stage. In addition, we have developed and interactive interface that can be publicly accessed to view this dataset.