Malaria Genomics and the Developing World

Abstract

Malaria is a disease caused by parasites from genus Plasmodium, a member of the Apicomplexan family. Apicomplexans are unique in that they are the only fully parasitic large clade on the tree of life. It is thought that every type of mammal, bird, and reptile is parasitized by at least one species of Plasmodium (Morrison 2009). Five Plasmodium species infect humans: Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium malariae, Plasmodium ovale, and Plasmodium knowlesi, which until recently was thought to infect only nonhuman primates (Cox-Singh et al. 2008). P. falciparum and P. vivax are the most prevalent species, and P. falciparum is responsible for most cases of severe malaria and death. A key feature of Apicomplexans is that these eukaryotic organisms exist mainly in a haploid state with most having only a brief obligatory diploid phase. Another difference is the apicoplast, a plastid believed to have originated from the phagocytosis of a chloroplast-containing microorganism (Waller and McFadden 2005).KeywordsSingle Nucleotide Polymorphism ArrayArtemisinin ResistanceChloroquine ResistancePlasmodium KnowlesiFalciparum GenomeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.