Erythroblasts provide a home for gametocytes

Abstract

In this issue of Blood, Neveu and colleagues shed new light on the development of Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes in the bone marrow. They demonstrate that gametocytes invade and mature inside erythroblasts in the erythroblastic islands, whereas parasite infection and extracellular vesicles secreted by parasites delay the maturation of the erythroblast to allow the gametocyte maturation to coincide with release of their host cell from the bone marrow1.