Malaria Genome Analysis Reveals an Abundance of Potential New … – Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (blog)

The researchers used next-generation sequencing technology to count those barcodes, and hence measure the growth of each genetically modified malaria parasite. If the switched-off gene was not essential, the parasite numbers shot up, but if the knocked-out gene was essential, the parasite disappeared.

This work was made possible by a new method that enabled us to investigate more than 2500 genes in a single studymore than the entire research community has studied over the past two decades, explained co-senior study investigator Oliver Billker, Ph.D., senior group leader at Sanger. We believe that this method can be used to build a deep understanding of many unknown aspects of malaria biology and radically speed up our understanding of gene function and prioritization of drug targets."

The researchers systematically showed that the malaria parasite can easily dispose of the genes that produce proteins that give away its presence to the host's immune system. This poses problems for the development of malaria vaccines, as the parasite can quickly alter its appearance to the human immune system, and, as a result, the parasite can build resistance to the vaccine.

"We knew from previous work that on its surface the malaria parasite has many dispensable parts, remarked co-senior study investigator Julian Rayner, Ph.D., senior group leader and director of Wellcome Genome Campus Connecting Science. Our study found that below the surface the parasite is more of a Formula 1 race car than a clunky people carrier. The parasite is fine-tuned and retains the absolute essential genes needed for growth. This is both good and bad: The bad news is it can easily get rid of the genes behind the targets we are trying to design vaccines for, but the flip side is there are many more essential gene targets for new drugs than we previously thought."

The authors stressed that the factors influencing gene function go well beyond the realm of basic science research, concluding that the level of genetic redundancy in a single-celled organism may thus reflect the degree of environmental variation it experiences. In the case of Plasmodium parasites, this helps rationalize both the relative successes of drugs and the greater difficulty of making an effective vaccine.

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Malaria Genome Analysis Reveals an Abundance of Potential New ... - Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (blog)