Abstract
Escalating drug resistance in malaria parasites and lack of vaccine entails the discovery of novel drug targets and inhibitor molecules. The multi-component protein translation machinery is a rich source of such drug targets. Malaria parasites contain three translational compartments: the cytoplasm, apicoplast and mitochondrion, of which the latter two are of the prokaryotic type. Recent explorations by many groups into the malaria parasite protein translation enzymes, aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRSs), have yielded many promising inhibitors. The understanding of the biology of this unique set of 36 enzymes has become much clearer in recent times. Current review discusses the advances made in understanding of crucial aaRSs from Plasmodium and also the specific inhibitors found against malaria aaRSs.
Highlights
Plasmodium falciparum causes the most lethal form of malaria and is the world’s largest killer with ~ 438,000 deaths and more than 200 million infections annually [1]
Tryptophanyl‐tRNA synthetase has an unusual architecture Another unusual aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase (aaRS) that malaria parasite possesses is tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase (TrpRS) which contain a trans-editing factor alanine-tRNA synthetase editing domain homolog (AlaX) fused to its N-terminal (Fig. 3) [17, 18, 26]
Available inhibitors of bacterial-type organellar aaRSs suggest that their targeting is feasible
Summary
Plasmodium falciparum causes the most lethal form of malaria and is the world’s largest killer with ~ 438,000 deaths and more than 200 million infections annually [1]. Their comprehensive analysis revealed that malaria parasite P. falciparum contains 37 aaRS genes in its nucleus, which can form 36 enzymes [17] (Table 1). Studies mainly focused on cellular distribution of aaRSs and import of cytoplasmically charged tRNA to mitochondrion have revealed the scheme by which the malaria parasite efficiently utilizes a compromised array of 36 aaRSs to synthesize its proteome (Table 1) (Fig. 2).
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