**6. Obligate parasites have many "talents" of survival**

During their growth in the vertebrate host or mosquito vector, *Plasmodium* parasites undertake quick proliferation to yield a huge amount of offspring parasites. This speedy development depends sincerely on the effective achievement of vital nutrients such as purine nucleosides and nucleobases, amino acids, sugars, and vitamins from the host [46]. One of these vitamins, pantothenic acid (Vitamin B5), is a precursor of the important enzyme cofactor, CoA (**Figure 4**). As *Plasmodium* parasites cannot produce pantothenate *de novo*, the uptake and consumption of this precursor from the host are critical for existence. Studies in *P. falciparum* and *P. lophurae* have shown two diverse likely tactics used by malaria parasites in host erythrocytes to synthesize CoA [46]. While *P. falciparum* seems to use endogenous vitamin transporters to take up pantothenate from human plasma and a parasite-encoded transporter on the parasite plasma membrane to transport it from the erythrocyte cytoplasm into the parasite for the following employment, *P. lophurae* consumptions preformed CoA in its nucleated erythrocyte cytoplasm. The CoA transporter used by *P. lophurae* on its plasma membrane has not yet been identified.

**Figure 4.** *Highlighting the role of panothenate in the synthesis of coenzyme-a in obligate parasites.*
