Tagging to endogenous genes of Plasmodium falciparum using CRISPR/Cas9

BACKGROUND: Plasmodium falciparum is the deadliest malaria parasite. Currently, there are seldom commercial antibodies against P. falciparum proteins, which greatly limits the study on Plasmodium. CRISPR/Cas9 is an efficient genome editing method, which has been employed in various organisms. However, the use of this technique in P. falciparum is still limited to gene knockout, site-specific mutation and generation of green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter line with disruption of inserted sites. RESULTS: We have adapted the CRISPR/Cas9 system to add commercial tag sequences to endogenous genes of P. falciparum. To add HA or HA-TY1 tags to ck2β1, ck2α and stk, pL6cs-hDHFR-ck2β1/ck2α/stk was constructed, which contained sequences of tags, specific homologous arms, and sgRNA. The P. falciparum 3D7 strain was subsequently transfected with pUF1-BSD-Cas9 and pL6cs-hDHFR-ck2β1/ck2α/stk plasmids via electroporation. After that, BSD and WR99210 drugs were added to the culture to screen parasites containing both plasmids. Twenty days after electroporation, live parasites appeared and were collected to check the tagging by PCR, DNA sequencing, Western blotting and immuno-fluorescence assays. The results showed that the tags were successfully integrated into the C-terminus of these three proteins. CONCLUSIONS: We have improved the method to integrate tags to Plasmodium falciparum genes using the CRISPR/Cas9 method, which lays the foundation for further study of Plasmodium falciparum at the molecular level. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13071-017-2539-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.