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Updated: Jul 17, 2026

Methods to Investigate the Regulatory Role of Small RNAs and Ribosomal Occupancy of Plasmodium falciparum
Published on: December 4, 2015
Mitochondria and apicoplast of Plasmodium falciparum: behaviour on subcellular fractionation and the implication
Tamaki Kobayashi1, Shigeharu Sato, Shinzaburo Takamiya
1Department of Biomedical Chemistry, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan.
Abstract:
The mitochondrion and the apicoplast of the malaria parasite, Plasmodium spp. is microscopically observed in a close proximity to each other. In this study, we tested the suitability of two different separation techniques--Percoll density gradient centrifugation and fluorescence-activated organelle sorting--for improving the purity of mitochondria isolated from the crude organelle preparation of Plasmodium falciparum. To our surprise, the apicoplast was inseparable from the plasmodial mitochondrion by each method. This implies these two plasmodial organelles are bound each other. This is the first experimental evidence of a physical binding between the two organelles in Plasmodium.
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