Functional genomics, new tools in malaria research
Francesco DI GIROLAMO, Carla RAGGI, Emanuele BULTRINI, Alessandra LANFRANCOTTI, Francesco SILVESTRINI, Massimo SARGIACOMO, Cecilia BIRAGO, Elisabetta PIZZI, Pietro ALANO and Marta PONZI
Dipartimento di Malattie Infettive, Parassitarie ed Immunomediate, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Rome, Italy
Indirizzo per la corrispondenza (Address for correspondence): Marta Ponzi, Dipartimento di Malattie Infettive, Parassitarie e Immunomediate, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, V.le Regina Elena 299, 00161 Roma. E-mail: mponzi@iss.it.
. - The mosquito-transmitted unicellular parasite Plasmodium falciparum, the agent of malaria disease, still causes more than one million deaths every year in the tropical and subtropical areas of the world. New intervention strategies are needed to contrast the insurgence of resistance to effective drugs and insecticides. The complete annotated genomes of the human parasite P. falciparum and the rodent model P. yoelii is now available thus providing a prediction of their possible gene products. This makes feasible the application of functional genomics to malaria research with the final goal of providing a complete survey of Plasmodium life cycle. Genome-wide approaches to the study of transcriptome or proteome were successfully applied to malaria parasite with the promise for new drug and vaccine candidates in the next future.
Key words: plasmodium, transcriptome, proteome, bioinformatics.
Source: Ann Ist Super Sanità 2005;41(4):469-477
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