My PhD work focuses on characterizing exported proteins (single gene approach) and developing tools to study essential exported proteins at scale in the Plasmodium berghei blood stage.
Malaria is a mosquito borne disease, caused by the Plasmodium parasite. The lack of an effective vaccine, drug resistance and insufficient transmission control strategies, prevents the complete eradication of malaria, highlighting the need for improved interventions. Understanding basic aspects of parasite biology furthers the development of new treatments and control strategies to malaria.
Nearly half of the Plasmodium genome is predicted to be essential for parasite survival, making these genes suitable for the development of treatments and vaccines. Unfortunately uncovering the function of essential genes in Plasmodium has been difficult due to low genetic tractability of the parasite. To address this, I am currently working on developing a scalable CRISPR based system to conditionally knockout essential genes in Plasmodium, using the P. berghei model. I am a PhD student in Ellen Bushell lab.
Crucial to disease progression of malaria is the invasion of host red blood cells (RBCs) by the parasite during the asexual blood stage. At this stage the parasite hijacks the host RBC and traffics proteins, collectively termed as the exportome, which it uses to significantly alter the host RBCs to ensure its survival. These parasite induced changes are responsible for important processes such as sequestration, nutrient uptake and immune evasion.
In parallel to genetic tool development, I am also working on characterizing specific exported proteins in the P. berghei blood stage by looking at their localization, interaction partners as well as virulence phenotype