CRISPR-Cas9 Genome Editing of Plasmodium knowlesi

Abstract

Plasmodium knowlesi is a zoonotic malaria parasite in Southeast Asia that can cause severe and fatal malaria in humans. The main hosts are Macaques, but modern diagnostic tools reveal increasing numbers of human infections. After P. falciparum, P. knowlesi is the only other malaria parasite capable of being maintained in long term in vitro culture with human red blood cells (RBCs). Its closer ancestry to other non-falciparum human malaria parasites, more balanced AT-content, larger merozoites and higher transfection efficiencies, gives P. knowlesi some key advantages over P. falciparum for the study of malaria parasite cell/molecular biology. Here, we describe the generation of marker-free CRISPR gene-edited P. knowlesi parasites, the fast and scalable production of transfection constructs and analysis of transfection efficiencies. Our protocol allows rapid, reliable and unlimited rounds of genome editing in P. knowlesi requiring only a single recyclable selection marker.