Abstract
Malaria, caused by parasites of the species Plasmodium, is among the major life-threatening diseases to afflict humanity. The infectious cycle of Plasmodium is very complex involving distinct life stages and transitions characterized by cellular and molecular alterations. Therefore, novel single-cell technologies are warranted to extract details pertinent to Plasmodium-host cell interactions and underpinning biological transformations. Herein, we tested two emerging spectroscopic approaches: (a) Optical Photothermal Infrared spectroscopy and (b) Atomic Force Microscopy combined with infrared spectroscopy in contrast to (c) Fourier Transform InfraRed microspectroscopy, to investigate Plasmodium-infected erythrocytes. Chemical spatial distributions of selected bands and spectra captured using the three modalities for major macromolecules together with advantages and limitations of each method is presented here. These results indicate that O-PTIR and AFM-IR techniques can be explored for extracting sub-micron resolution molecular signatures within heterogeneous and dynamic samples such as Plasmodium-infected human RBCs.
Highlights
Malaria, caused by parasites of the species Plasmodium, is among the major life-threatening diseases to afflict humanity
The very first stage of this process is constrained to the parasitophorous vacuole (PV), a structure allowing a parasite to grow within cell and at the same time being protected from the cell defense mechanisms[8]
In FTIR spectroscopy, IR light passing through a molecular material can be absorbed
Summary
Malaria, caused by parasites of the species Plasmodium, is among the major life-threatening diseases to afflict humanity. Chemical spatial distributions of selected bands and spectra captured using the three modalities for major macromolecules together with advantages and limitations of each method is presented here These results indicate that O-PTIR and AFM-IR techniques can be explored for extracting sub-micron resolution molecular signatures within heterogeneous and dynamic samples such as Plasmodium-infected human RBCs. 1234567890():,; Malaria is one of the most common and life-threatening diseases that continues to affect mankind. Diagnosis is still the key to start immediate treatment and through this, to reduce malaria-associated deaths Methods such as microscopic examination of infected blood smears[3,4], gene amplification techniques[5,6] or serological detection tests[7] are relied upon in clinical diagnosis of malaria. Given the relatively simple composition and structural features of terminally differentiated host RBCs, significant chemical differences between infected and uninfected RBCs, spectroscopic methods could be used to analyze the parasite’s developmental process
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