Mitochondria and apicoplast of Plasmodium falciparum: Behaviour on subcellular fractionation and the implication

Abstract The mitochondrion and the apicoplast of the malaria parasite, Plasmodium spp. is microscopically observed in a close proximity to each other. In this study, we tested the suitability of two different separation techniques – Percoll density gradient centrifugation and fluorescence-activated organelle sorting – for improving the purity of mitochondria isolated from the crude organelle preparation of Plasmodium falciparum . To our surprise, the apicoplast was inseparable from the plasmodial mitochondrion by each method. This implies these two plasmodial organelles are bound each other. This is the first experimental evidence of a physical binding between the two organelles in Plasmodium .