Autophagy in apicomplexan parasites

“…Autophagy is a highly conserved pathway in yeast and in higher eukaryotes, but a fully functional autophagy process in P. falciparum is still under debate, though there are many evidences suggesting that the autophagy‐like pathway exists in this parasite (Besteiro, ; Cervantes et al, ; Gaviria et al, ; Joy et al, ; Tomlins et al, ). Apicomplexans like P. falciparum and T. gondii have retained only a limited set of the autophagy machinery as compared to yeast and higher eukaryotes (Besteiro, ; Hain & Bosch, ), nevertheless some of these ATG proteins seem to participate in the canonical autophagy process (Cervantes et al, ; Joy et al, ; Nguyen et al, ; Tomlins et al, ) as well as autophagy‐independent roles (Bansal et al, ; Lévêque et al, ; Lévêque, Nguyen, & Besteiro, ; Walczak et al, ). As the conserved functions of ATG18 in vacuole morphology, fission and autophagy in Plasmodium remain entirely unexplored, we investigated its participation in these processes.…”