The biochemistry of Plasmodium falciparum: An updated overview

The last overview of the biochemistry of the malaria parasite was provided by Irwin Sherman's monograph, which, adhering to his good tradition, summarized this important field for the community. This chapter deals with metabolism as a set of chemical reactions organized in cellular metabolic pathways. The description of the various pathways relies heavily on the schemes of the website on the functional genomics of Plasmodium falciparum, Malaria Parasite Metabolic Pathways (MPMP). The MPMP project organizes data from the genome project of the parasite into assemblies with shared physiological and biological functions. The chapter deals with the metabolic pathways of carbohydrates, lipids, nucleotides, amino acids, redox metabolism, pathways in the mitochondrion, apicoplast, and hemoglobin (Hb) digestion. Phosphoenolpyruvate and glycerone-phosphate produced by glycolysis enter the apicoplast and serve as substrates for the biosynthesis of isoprenoids. A heme detoxification protein has been identified that is shown to enhance heme-to-hemozoin transformation and to be essential for parasite life.