Taking a Look at Plasmodium Falciparium

Malaria infection is caused by parasitic protozoan plasmodium. Several species of malaria parasites exist but the most fatal known is plasmodium falciparum. It enters the liver and replicates itself by getting into the red blood cell and ripping its way out when fully matured. It was once thought that the US military got close to completely eradicating the vector mosquito through DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) and the parasitic plasmodium with vaccines until they discovered that both are capable of mutating and gained the ability to be resistant to any chemicals scientists could produce (Horizon, 2005).

Without cell division and the cell cycle nearly all life would fail to exist. Cell division allows an organism to not only replace its own cells but to create offspring. The cell cycle consists of two main parts: interphase and mitotic phase. Within these two phases the processes can be broken down into further categories. Interphase can be broken down into three subphases that are the necessary preparations the cell makes in order to be ready to divide during mitosis. For this lab we looked mainly at the mitotic phase because of its fascinating and rapid changes to the cell. The cell types we looked at were prepared slides of whitefish and onion root tip.

Malaria (also called biduoterian fever, blackwater fever, falciparum malaria, plasmodium, Quartan malaria, and tertian malaria) is one of the most infectious and most common diseases in the world. This serious, sometimes-fatal disease is caused by a parasite that is carried by a certain species of mosquito called the Anopheles. It claims more lives every year than any other transmissible disease except tuberculosis. Every year, five hundred million adults and children (around nine percent of the world’s population) contract the disease and of these, one hundred million people die. Children are more susceptible to the disease than adults, and in Africa, where ninety percent of the world’s cases occur and where eighty percent of the cases

vivax. According to MSU, P. vivax is a protozoa (“Taxonomy of Plasmodium Species,” 1999). The biologists also found that the organelles found in P. vivax are as follows: concentric body, Golgi Complex, endoplasmic vesicles, food vacuoles, hemozoin, mitochondria, nucleus, pinocytic, plasmalemma, ribosomes, vacuole, vesicles. So, based on this, P. vivax is a eukaryotic organism (Trophozoite of P. vivax, 2015, April 27). Using this and information given by Nessa Nessy, the team found out that P. vivax does cellular respiration using absorbed dissolved nutrients from inside the mosquito (“Malaria,” 2013, October 24). According to World Health Organization, the mosquito not only provides energy to the organism, it also is the vector, meaning mosquitos transmit P. vivax to humans when drawing blood (“Fact Sheet about Malaria,” 2017,

The symptoms vary because patients are diagnosed with having either uncomplicated or severe malaria. This is due to the fact that different kinds of malaria range in severity. For instance, ,P. falciparum and P. knowlesi infections can cause rapidly progressive severe illness and lead to death death while the other species, P. malariae, P. vivax, or P. ovale are less likely to cause such severe manifestations. Furthermore, P. vivax and P. ovale infections also require treatment for the hypnozoite forms that remain dormant in the liver and can cause a relapsing infection. Finally, P. falciparum and P. vivax species have varying drug resistance patterns in different geographic regions. For P. falciparum and P. knowlesi infections, the urgent initiation of appropriate therapy is especially

1. The ability to seek out the human liver, which might provide essential fatty acids the plasmodium parasite cannot produce on its own, is one important adaptation of this organism.

Prompt and accurate diagnosis is critical to the effective management of malaria. The global impact of malaria has spurred interest in developing effective diagnostic strategies not only for resource-limited areas where malaria is a substantial burden on society, but also in developed countries, where malaria diagnostic expertise is often lacking [4,5]. Malaria diagnosis involves identifying malaria parasites or antigens/products in patient blood. Although this may seem simple, the diagnostic efficacy is subject to many factors. The different forms of the 5 malaria species; the different stages of erythrocytic schizogony, the endemicity of different species, the interrelation between levels of transmission, population movement, parasitemia,

Like the cellular slime molds, the plasmodium will change forms to create fruiting bodies when conditions deteriorate for survival. From these fruiting bodies, individual spores are created. A new plasmodial slime mold can form from

In Ghana, West Africa, the fight against malaria has been on since the 1950’s (Ghana Health Services, 2014). 3.5 million People contract malaria annually, with 25% of the death of children under the age of 5 tied to malaria (UNICEF, 2007). The effect on malaria on life, economy and productivity is devastating and every attempt aimed at controlling this epidemic is well targeted. Thus, for this project, we are designing a PRECEDE-PROCEED Model (PPM) targeted at malaria control in Ghana, West Africa.

Reproduction is critical when ensuring the survival of a species. As was mentioned in The Trails of Life, an organism’s main goal is to ensure that they pass along their genes to future generations. As it is, the process of reproduction is a costly and sometimes dangerous feat. Nature provides a plethora of issues that need to be overcome before an individual can successfully reproduce. Difficulties can, and often do, arise in nearly every stage of reproduction. Organisms may have to battle inauspicious environmental conditions, lack of resources, or physiological shortcomings, to name a few of the nearly inexhaustive list of issues surrounding reproduction. Although problems with reproduction exist, nature has evolved responses to cope with specific issues, allotting organisms with methods

Malaria is a major public health concern due to the fact that more than half of the world’s population is currently at risk of developing this disease (WHO, 2015). The regions that are currently affected by the various species of malaria are essential in the analysis for the future global transmission rate. In other words, to utilize the information generated by the Hadley Centre global Climate Model (HADCM) 3 programs, we must first understand the characteristics and features of the regions that are currently affected before we can determine the future impact of this disease. Current data indicates that the P. vivax is capable of living in regions with temperate and sub-tropical climate (Martens et al., 1999). In contrast the P. falciparum and P. malariae are restricted to regions with tropical climate, while the P. ovale is found mostly in Africa (Martens et al., 1999). However, if more regions of the world experience a shift in climate pattern, it can be argued that there will be an increase of the breeding ground available for this vector to grow and reproduce. As of date, all regions of the world are experiencing the effect of the current changes in climate pattern; therefore additional changes will have a global impact.

Therefore, we investigated the characterization of a member of the HSP-70 family from B. bigemina. The sequence of BbigHSP-70 was found in the genome sequence database of B. bigemina through the blast search with homologue sequences of B. bovis and B. gibsoni. The sequence of BbigHSP-70 from the Argentina strain was identified by sequencing. Gene has 2 copies in most apicomplexan, but we did not analyze the copy number in B. bigemina; this will be done in a future study. Phylogenetic analysis of the amino acid sequence showed that all intraerythrocytic protozoan parasites, including Plasmodium spp., make one group located outside the paraphyletic group containing eumycetes and vertebrates.

The worldwide incidence of Plasmodium species varies. Although, all the species may be present in all the regions, but specific ones are predominant in certain places. For example, while both species are present in South America and South East Asia, P. falciparum is commonest in Africa, Papua New Guinea and Hispaniola and P. vivax is mostly present in Central America and the

About 3.3 billion people, that is about half of the world’s population are at risk of contracting malaria (figure 1). Every year there are 250 million cases of malaria, and nearly 1 million deaths. That amounts to 2,732 deaths per day. Out of those million people that die every year, 800,000 of them are African children under the age of 5. To control malaria three actions need to be taken: insecticides need to be used to decrease the vector population, people have to be educated as to how to prevent the vector from reproducing, and anti-malarial drugs need to be distributed. To understand the vector and what the vector is, scientists had to first discover what the parasite was and how it worked. It was not until the year 1880 that French Physician Charles Laveran discovered that Malaria was caused by a protozoan in the genus Plasmodium (Malaria, 2013)

Feasibility of computer-aided identification of the Plasmodium berghei parasite in the liver stage life cycle and the classification of the parasite phenotype