13/14 Our predictions identified 13 known moonlighters (such as MCM3/5) and predicted 25 new ones (like signal recognition particle subunit SRP9).

11/14 We found that most subunits are more likely to participate in their complex in the later stages of the blood cycle (with some notable exceptions!). The complex assemblies typically peak jusft after the peak of the abundances of the complex subunits.

10/14 By the way, we collected the mass spec data in biological triplicates and in 7 timepoints across the IDC, so we could also look at the dynamics of the interactions!

9/14 Thanks to our great collaborators from Tim Gilgeber’s lab @cssbhamburg.bsky.social and @nishaphilip.bsky.social @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social , we validated some more complexes using fluorescence microscopy and pull-downs, like an exported complex in Maurer’s clefts and MON1/CCZ1/RMC1 complex.

8/14 We also identified two missing subunits of RNA exosome ring! Their sequence has a low similarity to the orthologs in model eukaryotic organisms, but are structurally conserved based on AlphaFold 3 prediction.

7/14 But now to the results: We could reconstruct complexes that have already been previously studied, but also some that are conserved in eukaryotes and have not been dissected in Plasmodium yet, such as LSm spliceosome subcomplex.

3/14 Subunits that form stable complex precipitate in a similar manner – this was already known and used to track the dynamics of protein complexes. Below, each point represent a protein in the dataset and the points with the same colors are subunits of protein complexes - they precipitate together!

Our predictions identified 13 known moonlighters (such as MCM3/5 subcomplex) and predicted 25 new ones (like signal recognition particle subunit SRP9).