Genome Sequencing May Fight Malaria Pandemic, Reaserchers Hopeful

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Genes from a rarer human malaria parasites are the main focus of the new study conducted by the team of scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and their national collaborators. The study aims to extract its sequences to enable to improve the surveillance of its occurrence and diagnosis that still cause 10 million malaria cases each year.

From the article released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, malaria is a serious and fatal disease caused by parasites that commonly infects a certain type of mosquito, which feeds on humans. High fevers, shaking chills and flu-like illness is the typical symptoms seen in the people who are infected with the parasites.

There are more than 100 species of Plasmodium that infects reptiles, birds and various animals. Four of the Plasmodium species are known to infect humans in nature. Also, there are one specie that naturally infects macaque monkeys, which has recently been found to cause zoonotic malaria in humans.

Species that infect humans are P. falciparum, which rapidly multiply in the blood and cause severe blood loss and P. vivax lodges into the liver and remains dormant for months or years after the infection from the mosquito bite. And when activated, it will invade the blood systematically.

Likewise, P. ovale species are just like P. vivax. It can also infect people who are not susceptible to P. vivax, which is the reason why it has the greater prevalence in Africa. P. malariae has the only three-day cycle of infection.

If not treated, this will result in a chronic infection that will last a lifetime. Lastly, P. knowlesi is known to cause zoonotic malaria in humans that has a 24-hour replication cycle and can rapidly progress from uncomplicated to severe infection.

However, since malaria is one of the dreaded diseases worldwide, researchers are striving hard to eradicate malaria as well as to come up with a potent vaccine against it. As a result, they recently determined the genome sequence of these Plasmodium species.

According to Science Daily, by comparing the new genomes against the sequenced genes of other malaria parasite, the researchers were able to identify and understand the genes that could evolve in human infection and in adapting a human host. They come up with the result of about 40 percent of the P. malariae and P. ovale contain genes that evolved in evading the immune system.

Likewise, the study also revealed that P. malariae has two new families of genes that have similar in shape of a vital gene of P. falciparum known as RH5. These genes are essential to the parasite to invade human red blood cells and at the same time, it is one of the top targets of the vaccines.

Though rarer species of malaria are much more difficult to eliminate, vaccines that will control them arevery essential. "The genomes should now make it possible to develop improved diagnostic tools for these Plasmodium species, to ensure that drug work against them and to assist vaccine development", Professor James McCarthy from QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute said.

The research team continues to compare different genome sequences from the samples from infected animals and humans to find out more about these malaria parasites and to come up with a vaccine that will help to irradiate and prevent malaria infection.

This new genetic information the researchers came up with is already available for other scientists in the malaria research community through the Sanger Institute GeneDB or the European Nucleotide Archive at the European Bioinformatics Institute.

Since the knowledge about these parasites that are present worldwide are very limited, researchers are hopeful that the genome sequencing will be essential to achieve the goal of complete malaria eradication.