Research Projects

Plasmodium falciparum, the pathogen causing the most virulent form of malaria, continues to present a significant economic and public health burden globally. The pathogen’s major variant surface antigen of the blood stages, known as P. falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1) undergoes clonal antigenic variation to switch surface antigens on the infected erythrocyte, thereby evading the host immune system and allowing the parasite to persist in the human host for many months. PfEMP1 is encoded by the var multigene family, with each parasite possessing up to approximately 60 var genes. Given that repertoires and genes diversify by recombination, looking at local populations is key to understanding the evolution of these immune evasion genes in the natural world. A scalable approach in epidemiological studies has been to use a small conserved region encoding the immunogenic DBLα domain (i.e., DBLα tags) as a marker to estimate var diversity. The Day Lab has generated DBLα tag sequences from longitudinally-sampled isolates in a local area of high malaria transmission. The overall aims of this project are to develop and apply mathematical/statistical algorithms to identify DBLα recombinants in longitudinal surveys (pre-, during- and post-intervention) and to employ bioinformatic methods to investigate the evolution of these antigen genes in relation to an intervention in a local area with high malaria transmission.

Project site: Bio21 Institute

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