Scientists find key to malaria growth

This accelerated growth aids the disease in adapting to anti-malarial drugs.

Researchers have now determined the type and quantum of cyclins in the Malaria parasite. Understanding why this happens may help know how the parasite grows fastest inside a bug and it is human host, which can lead to new remedies for that disease. The life cycle and development of parasite and cells is due to three types of molecules of cyclin protein. However, scientists found what drives the growth of malaria parasite, aiming towards developing a treatment that could halt the process.

New, more potent treatments of malaria will be a huge achievement as, despite the preemptive vaccines and treatment courses that doctors have available at the moment, the disease is still responsible for more than half a million deaths every year.

The findings of a study led by a team from the University of Nottingham could lead to new malaria treatments.

The mosquito-borne disease claims the lives of 500,000 people each year, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of cases and deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa. The symptoms can manifest themselves anywhere between 10 and 15 days of the plasmodium carrying mosquito biting a person. The malaria parasite needs two hosts to thrive.

By learning how to better control its divisibility and eventually stopped all-together through the deletion of certain proteins within the parasitic organism, malaria will be a thing of the past.

If not treated, malaria can quickly disrupt the blood supply to vital organs and become life-threatening. The master control proteins for the cell cycle are cyclins and their partners, as well as cyclin-dependent kinases. The P-type cyclin is closely related to cyclins found within plants, researchers said. Cyclins are important for cell progress and division. But little was been aware of them within the malaria parasite and just how they affect cell development – so far. Though protein has been extensively studied in humans and plants, its applicability in parasite research has never been considered, until now.

Dr Magali Roques, lead author of the study, said the research “will definitely further our understanding of parasite cell division, which I hope will lead to the elimination of this disease in the future”. During the asexual process, the chromosomes inside the cell nucleus divide but the nucleus itself does not – this is called “endomitosis”.