Malaria is a devastating global disease with several hundred million clinical cases and just under 1 million deaths each year (http://www.who.int/topics/malaria/). It is caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium, which have a complex life cycle in a vertebrate host and a mosquito vector. Malaria parasites are haploid throughout most of this life cycle, replicating by asexual multipl...

Ca(2+) contributes to a myriad of important cellular processes in all organisms, including the apicomplexans, Plasmodium and Toxoplasma. Due to its varied and essential roles, free Ca(2+) is tightly regulated by complex mechanisms. These mechanisms are therefore of interest as putative drug targets. One pathway in Ca(2+) homeostatic control in apicomplexans uses a Ca(2+)/H(+) exchanger (a membe...

Differentiation from asexual blood stages to mature sexual gametocytes is required for the transmission of malaria parasites. Here, we report that ApiAP2 transcription factor, PfAP2-G2 (PF3D7_1408200) plays a critical role in maturation Plasmodium falciparum gametocytes. binds promoters wide array genes are expressed at many parasite life cycle. Interestingly, also find binding within gene body...

Drug development efforts have focused mostly on the asexual blood stages of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum Except for primaquine, which has its own limitations, there are no available drugs that target the transmission of the parasite to mosquitoes. Therefore, there is a need to validate new parasite proteins that can be targeted for blocking transmission. P. falciparum calcium-depe...

The twofold cost of sex implies that sexual and asexual reproduction do not coexist easily. Asexual forms tend to outcompete sexuals but may eventually suffer higher extinction rates, creating tension between short- and long-term advantages of different reproductive modes. The 'short-sightedness' of asexual reproduction takes a particularly intriguing form in gynogenetic species complexes, in w...

Combining George C. Williams' idea that evolutionary constraints prevent asexual mutants from arising more frequently in low fecundity organisms, like mammals and birds, with an earlier one by David Lack that the brood size of these organisms has an optimum, and producing larger broods reduces their fitness, leads to a novel hypothesis about the maintenance of sex in them. All else equal, the e...

as powerful antimalarial agents. The work carried out in the School of Tropical Medicine, Calcutta, on the action of these drugs on the Indian strains of malaria parasites is in accord with findings obtained in other parts of the world. Plasmoquin has been tried by a large number of workers, and in India, Napier, Butcher and Das Gupta (1932) used it with success in their field experiments. Ateb...

Ketotifen has recently been reported to inhibit the growth of both asexual and sexual malaria parasites. A parasite transporter, PfgABCG2, has been implicated in its mechanism of action. Human dihydrofolate reductase (hDHFR) is the most commonly used selectable marker to create transgenic Plasmodium falciparum cell lines. Growth assays using transgenic P. falciparum parasites with different sel...

Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), composed primarily of DNA and proteases, are released from activated neutrophils and contribute to the innate immune response by capturing pathogens. Plasmodium falciparum, the causative agent of severe malaria, thrives in its host by counteracting immune elimination. Here, we report the discovery of a novel virulence factor of P. falciparum, a TatD-like D...