Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Jul 26.
doi: 10.1111/jmi.70015. Online ahead of print.

Traction force generation in Plasmodium sporozoites is modulated by a surface adhesin

Johanna Ripp  1 , Dimitri Probst  2 , Mirko Singer  1 , Ulrich S Schwarz  2 , Friedrich Frischknecht  1   3
Affiliations

Traction force generation in Plasmodium sporozoites is modulated by a surface adhesin

Johanna Ripp et al. J Microsc. .

Abstract

Plasmodium sporozoites are the highly polarised and motile forms of the malaria parasite transmitted by mosquitoes to the vertebrate hosts. Sporozoites use myosin motors to generate retrograde flow of actin filaments. These are linked to plasma membrane spanning adhesins, which in turn bind to the extracellular environment, resulting in forward directed gliding motility. The gliding motility machine of sporozoites leads to high speeds in the range of micrometres per second, which are essential for efficient migration in the skin. Yet, it is not clear how the individual parts of the machinery work together to generate force during migration. Sporozoites are elongated and curved cells and move on circular tracks in vitro. Sporozoites lacking the adhesin thrombospondin-related anonymous protein (TRAP) like protein, TLP, can still migrate in the skin, but at a lower level. TLP lacking sporozoites generate a lower force on the dorsal (nonsubstrate facing) surface as measured by laser tweezers. Here we use traction force microscopy to investigate motile sporozoites and the forces they produce during migration on their ventral surface. Both wild type and tlp(-) sporozoites show distinct foci of force generation, but tlp(-) sporozoites generating overall lower forces. Our findings demonstrate that TLP is an important element of the force-generating machinery during sporozoite gliding motility.

Keywords: Plasmodium; cell migration; gliding motility; traction force microscopy.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Douglas, R. G., Amino, R., Sinnis, P., & Frischknecht, F. (2015). Active migration and passive transport of malaria parasites. Trends in Parasitology, 31(8), 357–362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2015.04.010
    1. Frischknecht, F., & Matuschewski, K. (2017). Plasmodium sporozoite biology. Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine, 7(5), a025478. https://doi.org/10.1101/cshperspect.a025478
    1. Ménard, R., Tavares, J., Cockburn, I., Markus, M., Zavala, F., & Amino, R. (2013). Looking under the skin: The first steps in malarial infection and immunity. Nature Reviews. Microbiology, 11(10), 701–712. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3111
    1. Heintzelman, M. B. (2015). Gliding motility in apicomplexan parasites. Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology, 46, 135–142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.semcdb.2015.09.020
    1. Singer, M., & Frischknecht, F. (2023). Still running fast: Plasmodium ookinetes and sporozoites 125 years after their discovery. Trends in Parasitology, 39(12), 991–995. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pt.2023.09.015

LinkOut - more resources