Regulation of Gene Expression

Malaria parasites represent an evolutionary lineage quite distant from the model organisms within the crown group of eukaryotes on which much of our current knowledge of basic biological mechanisms is based. With regard to regulation of gene expression, studies in Plasmodium have identified numerous aspects that are conserved in higher eukaryotic organisms; however, there are also several characteristics that appear to be quite different, and others that remain very poorly understood. In this chapter we review what is known about the many steps involved in regulating gene expression, from transcription initiation, through mRNA processing to protein synthesis. A better understanding of how specific gene expression patterns are controlled will shed light on such important features of parasite biology as antigenic variation, sexual differentiation, and cell cycle progression, to name a few.