Figure 2

Metabolite profiling of different asexual stages of P. falciparum-infected RBCs. Volcano plot combing statistical significance and fold change observed in metabolites in the culture supernatant of P. falciparum-infected RBC compared to normal RBC at different time points of. Red circles indicate metabolites with a fold change >2 and statistical significance P < 0.05. Green circles indicate metabolites with a fold change <2 and statistical significance P < 0.05. Yellow circles indicate metabolites, which have statistical significance, but insignificant fold change values. Coloured black circles indicate metabolites that are statistically not significant and have insignificant fold change. Open black circles indicate metabolites that have a fold change <or >2, but are not statistically significant. (a) Volcano plot for affected metabolites between culture supernatant of uninfected RBCs and ring-infected RBCs. Only two metabolites show a significant upregulation and one metabolite shows a significant down regulation. (b) Volcano plot depicting affected metabolites between culture supernatant of uninfected RBCs and trophozoite-infected RBCs. A few metabolites show significant upregulation. (c) Volcano plot depicting metabolites affected between culture supernatant of uninfected RBCs and schizont-infected RBCs. At this stage, many metabolites show significant upregulation implying active change in the host metabolome following P. falciparum-infection of RBC. (d) Venn diagram representing a stage-specific metabolic correlation analysis, with each coloured circle representing a specific P. falciparum intra-erythrocyte developmental stage. It represents the metabolites (P < 0.05) that are affected in the supernatants of RBCs infected at the ring, trophozoite and schizont stages and their uniqueness/overlap between different life cycle stages.