Asparagine Repeats in Plasmodium falciparum Proteins: Good for Nothing?

Malaria is a deadly parasitic human disease that poses a significant health risk for about 3.3 billion people in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world [1]. The past decade has seen significant progress in our understanding of the biology of the most deadly parasite species, Plasmodium falciparum. The groundwork for this progress was laid by genome sequencing efforts that revealed a number of surprising features [2], [3]. One striking aspect of this extreme AT-rich genome is the abundance of trinucleotide repeats (predominantly AAT) coding for asparagine [3]. The wealth of low-complexity regions in P. falciparum proteins had been known prior to sequencing of the genome but not the overabundance of simple amino acid repeats [4].

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