Scientists Decode Malaria Parasite Genome
It was announced on Wednesday that scientists have tracked the genomes of the parasite that is the foundation of the majority of malaria cases outside of Africa.
They have also discovered the monkey parasite that is increasingly a significant cause of malaria for people in Southeast Asia.
This information ought to help bring to light new drugs and vaccines to combat the mosquito-borne disease.
"It’s going to be a very powerful tool," Jane Carlton of the New York University Langone Medical Center stated.
A panel headed by Carlton mapped out the entire genetic sequence of the parasite Plasmodium vivax, which is the main source of malaria in Latin America and the Asian countries India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Melanesia and the Korean peninsula.
It is the cause for up to 40 percent of malaria cases throughout the world, with a probability of 2.6 billion people in jeopardy of contracting the parasite.
The World Health Organization announced that malaria killed 881,000 people and infected 247 million people around the world in 2006. Several malaria specialists say the numbers underestimate the severity of the problem.
Most malaria deaths happen in Africa and are caused by the Plasmodium falciparum parasite. This genome was mapped out in 2002.
Although this type malaria the parasite causes is infrequently deadly, it causes rigorous symptoms like recurring high fevers followed by headache, chills and copious sweating, vomiting, diarrhea and enlargement of the spleen.
The vivax parasite can stay dormant in the liver and re-emerge to cause relapses months or years after the original illness.
The researchers determined that genes are to blame for this dormancy.
The researchers acknowledged that the genes in the parasite appear to help it attack a person’s red blood cells and avoid the immune system. The parasite is increasingly resistant to some antimalarial drugs.
Arnab Pain, head of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Britain, headed a research team that decoded the entire genetic sequence of the monkey parasite Plasmodium knowlesi.
This parasite is rapidly establishing itself as the fifth human-infecting malaria parasite and has surfaced as a significant health problem in Southeast Asia, Pain said.
"During the course of evolution, malaria parasites have devised different tricks to avoid being detected and dampen the host immune responses," Pain said.
Some of the parasite’s genes bear a resemblance to a human gene that helps regulate the immune system.
"Thus, it has been rather difficult to find a single parasite protein that could be used as an effective vaccine candidate which would provide effective and long-term protection against all parasite strains circulating within a given population at a given time," Pain said.
The full study and report will be available in the Nature journal.
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