Structural Features of Apicomplexan Pore-Forming Proteins and Their Roles in Parasite Cell Traversal and Egress

Apicomplexan parasites cause diseases, including malaria and toxoplasmosis, in a range of hosts, including humans. These intracellular parasites utilize pore-forming proteins that disrupt host cell membranes to either traverse host cells while migrating through tissues or egress from the parasite-containing vacuole after replication. This review highlights recent insight gained from the newly available three-dimensional structures of several known or putative apicomplexan pore-forming proteins that contribute to cell traversal or egress. These new structural advances suggest that parasite pore-forming proteins use distinct mechanisms to disrupt host cell membranes at multiple steps in parasite life cycles. How proteolytic processing, secretion, environment, and the accessibility of lipid receptors regulate the membranolytic activities of such proteins is also discussed.

• Publication year

  2017

• Venue

  Toxins

• Publication date

  2017-08-29

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3390/toxins9090265PMID 28850082PMCID 5618198
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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