Fig 3. Nutritional requirements of P. falciparum concerning essential backbone moieties.

Note: the presence of orthophosphate and S-adenosylmethioninamine in the same medium is not allowed. When P. falciparum grows on orthophosphate and S-adenosylmethioninamine as the only sources of phosphate and purines, it cannot synthesize enough ATP. The ATP limitation impedes the production of other phosphorylated nucleotides, sugar nucleotides, sphingomyelin and phospholipids in the stoichiometrically required amounts. As suggested throughout the manuscript, these metabolic processes are thermodynamically dependent (more details in the S1 Methods).