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Malaria is a vector-borne disease. It is caused by Plasmodium parasites. Plasmodium yoelii is a rodent model parasite, primarily used for studying parasite development in liver cells and vectors. To better understand parasite biology, we carried out a high-throughput-based proteomic analysis of P. yoelii . From the same mass spectrometry (MS)/MS data set, we also captured several post-translational modified peptides by following a bioinformatics analysis without any prior enrichment. Further, we carried out a proteogenomic analysis, which resulted in improvements to some of the existing gene models along with the identification of several novel genes. Analysis of proteome and post-translational modifications (PTMs) together resulted in the identification of 3124 proteins. The identified PTMs were found to be enriched in mitochondrial metabolic pathways. Subsequent bioinformatics analysis provided an insight into proteins associated with metabolic regulatory mechanisms. Among these, the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle and the isoprenoid synthesis pathway are found to be essential for parasite survival and drug resistance. The proteogenomic analysis discovered 43 novel protein-coding genes. The availability of an in-depth proteomic landscape of a malaria pathogen model will likely facilitate further molecular-level investigations on pre-erythrocytic stages of malaria., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

The biotransformation of the front-line antimalarial drug, artemisinin (1) by the filamentous fungus Aspergillus flavus MTCC-9167 was investigated. Incubation of compound 1 with A. flavus afforded a new hydroxy derivative (2) along with three known metabolites (3-5). The new compound was characterized as 14-hydroxydeoxyartemisinin (2) by extensive spectroscopic data analysis (IR, 1 H and 13 C NMR, HSQC, HMBC, COSY, NOESY, and HR-ESIMS). The known metabolites were identified as deoxyartemisinin (3), artemisinin G (4), and 4α-hydroxydeoxyartemisinin (5). This is the first report of hydroxylation of a secondary methyl of artemisinin at C-14 by the fungus A. flavus, which is synthetically not accessible. In addition, these compounds were evaluated for their in vitro antiplasmodial activity. Artemisinin G (4) exhibited IC 50 values in the submicromolar range, which was better than those of the nonperoxidic metabolites.

Licochalcone A (I), isolated from the roots of Chinese licorice, is the most promising antimalarial compound reported so far. In continuation of our drug discovery program, we isolated two similar chalcones, medicagenin (II) and munchiwarin (III), from Crotalaria medicagenia , which exhibited antimalarial activity against Plasmodium falciparum . A library of 88 chalcones were synthesized and evaluated for their in vitro antimalarial activity. Among these, 67, 68, 74, 77, and 78 exhibited good in vitro antimalarial activity against P. falciparum strains 3D7 and K1 with low cytotoxicity. These chalcones also showed reduction in parasitemia and increased survival time of Swiss mice infected with Plasmodium yoelii (strain N-67). Pharmacokinetic studies indicated that low oral bioavailability due to poor ADME properties. Molecular docking studies revealed the binding orientation of these inhibitors in active sites of falcipain-2 (FP-2) enzyme. Compounds 67, 68, and 78 showed modest inhibitory activity against the major hemoglobin degrading cysteine protease FP-2.