Evolutionary divergence of Plasmodium falciparum: sequences, protein-protein interactions, pathways and processes

In this article we review the organism-wide biological data available for Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum), a malarial parasite, in relation to the data available for other organisms. We provide comparisons at different levels such as amino acid sequences of proteins encoded in the genomes, protein-protein interaction features, metabolic and signaling pathways and processes. Our comparative analyses highlights that P. falciparum is highly diverged compared to most other eukaryotes at all these levels. Despite the extensive variation some of the physical associations between proteins, such as RNA polymerase complex and CDK-cyclin complex are expected to be conserved given their fundamental importance and ubiquitous nature. We also discuss examples of protein-protein interactions across human and P. falciparum potentially happening during pathogenesis.