Fig. 4. Long-term starvation inhibits reinvasion of host RBCs.

a Giemsa stained smears showing rings in representative iRBCs. Highly synchronized schizonts were incubated in complete or starvation medium in presence or absence of 3-MA for 6, 12 and 24 h. Giemsa stained smears were assessed for number of rings and parasite morphology. Scale bar: 5 µm. b As described in (a), morphological analysis of the parasites after various treatments at different time points were carried out. Graphs representing % parasitemia for these three time points are shown in b–d. The data represented are mean of 5 individual experiments. Number of parasites scored for rings, n = 2500. Error bars show standard deviation