Abstract
Plasmodium vivax is responsible for most of the malaria infections outside Africa and is currently the predominant malaria parasite in countries under elimination programs. P. vivax preferentially enters young red cells called reticulocytes. Advances in understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms of entry are hampered by the inability to grow large numbers of P. vivax parasites in a long‐term in vitro culture. Recent progress in understanding the biology of the P. vivax Reticulocyte Binding Protein (PvRBPs) family of invasion ligands has led to the identification of a new invasion pathway into reticulocytes, an understanding of their structural architecture and PvRBPs as targets of the protective immune response to P. vivax infection. This review summarises current knowledge on the role of reticulocytes in P. vivax infection, the function of the PvRBP family of proteins in generating an immune response in human populations, and the characterization of anti‐PvRBP antibodies in blocking parasite invasion.
Highlights
This study showed the detection of early‐stage P. vivax infection in reticulocytes with visible reticulum staining, suggesting that modifications to reticulocytes as observed ex vivo may not happen as rapidly in vivo (Lim et al, 2016)
PvRBP1a binding is sialic acid independent but trypsin and chymotrypsin sensitive (Ntumngia et al, 2018), whereas PvRBP2c binding is insensitive to all three enzyme treatments (Gupta et al, 2017). These results strongly suggest that other reticulocyte receptors will be important for P. vivax invasion
Conditional knockout of any component of the trimeric complex resulted in merozoites that could attach to human erythrocytes, but were unable to invade. These results suggest that Ripr and CyRPA have different roles in P. knowlesi than in P. falciparum and may have different roles in P. vivax invasion
Summary
160–1170 Native protein Native protein 30–778 30–351 352–778 352–599 1956–2315 351–599 352–599 157–481 157–650 461–976 632–976 632–1078 950–1569 1542–2192 2162–2662 140–1275 339–587 160–1135 161–1454 501–1300 Native protein Native protein 168–524 464–876 2398–2736 161–641
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