Protein profiling of mefloquine resistant Plasmodium falciparum using mass spectrometry-based proteomics

Malaria is a mosquito borne infectious disease caused by protozoa of genus Plasmodium. There are five species of Plasmodium that are found to infect humans. Plasmodium falciparum can cause severe malaria leading to higher morbidity and mortality of malaria than the other four species. Antimalarial resistance is the major obstacle to control malaria. Mefloquine was used in combination with Artesunate for uncomplicated P. falciparum in South East Asia and it has developed and established mefloquine resistance in this region. Here, gel-enhanced liquid chromatography/tandem mass spectrometry (GeLC–MS/MS)-based proteomics and label-free quantification were used to explore the protein profiles of mefloquine-sensitive and -induced resistant P. falciparum. A Thai P. falciparum isolate (S066) was used as a model in this research. Our data revealed for the first time that 69 proteins exhibited at least 2-fold differences in their expression levels between the two parasite lines. Of these, 36 were up-regulated and 33 were down-regulated in the mefloquine-resistant line compared with the mefloquine-sensitive line. These findings are consistent with those of past studies, where the multidrug resistance protein Pgh1 showed an up-regulation pattern consistent with that expected from its average 3-copy pfmdr1 gene number. Pgh1 and eight other up-regulated proteins (i.e., histo-aspartyl protease protein, exportin 1, eukaryotic translation initiation factor 3 subunit 8, peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase, serine rich protein homologue, exported protein 1, ATP synthase beta chain and phospholipid scramblase 1) were further validated for their expression levels using reverse transcriptase quantitative real-time PCR. The data support the up-regulation status in the mefloquine-resistant parasite line of all the candidate genes referred to above. Therefore, GeLC–MS/MS-based proteomics combined with label-free quantification is a reliable approach for exploring mefloquine resistance biomarkers in P. falciparum. Identification of these proteins leads to better understanding of mefloquine resistant mechanisms in malaria parasites.