CREATE Monthly PI Seminar Series (May 2016)

Event Date: 06 May 2016 03:00 AM - 06 May 2016 05:00 AM

Event Venue: CREATE Theatrette, CREATE Tower (Level 2)

Talk Abstract

Malaria remains a huge global burden affecting more than 200 million people each year. In SE Asia tackling the malaria problem faces a number of unique challenges with drug resistance, zoonotic malaria and the large number of the exceptionally difficult to threat Plasmodium vivax being prominent challenges. The genome sequence available for different Plasmodium species is a valuable resource for understanding malaria parasite biology. This combined with transcriptional profiling of the developmental stages of the parasite have provided us with powerful clues to understand the biology of the parasite and to develop new intervention strategies against the parasite. In this talk I will present three different approaches we have used to gain a better understanding of how parasite genetics impacts on biology and pathology. Specifically I will present new information obtained from the transcriptional profiling of P. vivax, the insights we have obtained from the characterization of controlled human infection studies and finally a novel comparative transcriptomic approach involving six plasmodium species to understand evolutionary conservation and divergence as a tool to identify novel drug targets.