A new extensive genetic resource of rat-infecting malaria parasites may help advance the development of malaria prevention and treatment strategies. This trove of genome and phenome information has been published¹ by a team of KAUST researchers, along with colleagues in Japan, and the datasets have been made publicly available for malaria researchers. 

Rodent malaria parasites are closely related to human parasites but are easier to study because they can be grown in laboratory mice. “Investigations on rodent malaria parasites have played a key role in revealing many aspects of fascinating biology across their life-cycle stages,” says KAUST bioscientist Arnab Pain, who led the sequencing effort, in collaboration with Richard Culleton of Nagasaki University’s Institute of Tropical Medicine.

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Image: A team of scientists at KAUST has sequenced the rodent-malaria parasite Plasmodium vinckei, which could help advance the development of malaria prevention and treatment strategies.
© 2021 Morgan Bennett Smith