Bug enthusiasts who caught the January 2011 edition of the Journal of Insect Physiology may have noticed something odd on page 35, just under the lead scientists name:

Huron Park Secondary School, Woodstock, Ontario, Canada.

Jessie MacAlpine was only a Grade 9 student when she published her first research paper, The effects of CO2 and chronic cold exposure on fecundity of female Drosophila melanogaster.

Today, the 18-year-old is in her first year at the University of Toronto and has moved on to even loftier pursuits. Using a molecular compound she stumbled upon in high school, MacAlpine is developing a potential new drug for malaria, a parasitic disease that infects about 219 million people every year and is growing resistant to available drugs.

If all goes according to plan, MacAlpines drug will be cheap, effective and accessible to people in the developing world. It will also be made from mustard oil.

Globally, were always in desperate need of another anti-malarial product, said Ian Crandall, a U of T professor who has been working with MacAlpine at the Sandra A. Rotman Laboratories, where he is a principal investigator.

The interesting thing about what Jessie has been doing is (that) growing mustard oil is not something that requires a huge facility to do. If its kind of a natural product that can be used to treat malaria, then its something thats worth looking into.

The daughter of an accountant and stay-at-home mom, MacAlpine knew she wanted to be a scientist as early as Grade 2, when she signed one of her homework assignments Dr. Jessie MacAlpine. By the time she graduated high school, she had already won a top prize at an international science fair, launched a research collaboration with U of T scientists and made two interesting discoveries in her basement lab both of which she is now in the process of patenting.

One of her patents is for a bioherbicide, which MacAlpine developed using molecular compounds found in garlic mustard plants and Tim Hortons coffee grounds.

The other is a mustard-oil compound, allyl isothiocyanate the stuff that gives mustard and wasabi its pungent kick which she hopes to develop into a treatment.

See the article here:
Science prodigy Jessie MacAlpine, 18, takes on malaria with mustard oil