Study outline

1) Laboratory mice were infected with the rodent specific malaria parasite, Plasmodium berghei. The malaria infected livers were subsequently removed and snap-frozen at multiple time points, from early to late infection. 2) The snap-frozen tissues were cut into very thin, 10 micro-meter slices, and 3) placed onto a special microscopy slide covered in spatially barcoded molecular probes, which can capture RNA directly from the tissue above them. 4) Sequencing of the spatially barcoded RNA enables analyses of the expression of different genes. Thus, gene expression profiles were charted across the liver tissue samples to identify and compare gene expression across different tissue regions, such as parasite infected versus non-infected tissue areas (The figure was created with BioRender.com).