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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 08 2018, @01:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the mutant-malaria dept.

Researchers have exploited a quirk in the genetic make-up of the deadly malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, to create 38,000 mutant strains and then determine which of the organism's genes are essential to its growth and survival. P. falciparum is responsible for about half of all malaria cases and 90 percent of all malaria deaths. New information about the parasite's critical gene repertoire could help investigators prioritize targets for future antimalarial drug development.

[...] The complete genetic sequence of P. falciparum was determined more than a decade ago, but the functions of most of its genes remain unknown, and until now only a few hundred mutant strains had been created in the lab. The difficulties in manipulating P. falciparum stem in part from the extremely high percentage of adenine or thymine (two of the four chemical building blocks that make up DNA) in its genome. Standard methods for creating mutants rely on more variation in gene sequences and so do not work on P. falciparum. In the new research, Dr. Adams and his colleagues created mutated versions of nearly all the parasite's 6,000 genes with a technique that preferentially targets areas rich in adenine and thymine, thus exploiting the very feature that had foiled previous attempts at genetic manipulation.

M Zhang et al. Uncovering the essential genes of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum by saturation mutagenesis. Science DOI:10.1126/science.aap7847 (2018).


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  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:08PM (2 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:08PM (#677040) Journal

    Previously: William Gates III warns about the impending lethal real life virus that could wipe out millions and millions of people. (in traditional microsoft style, of course, the virus will be out two years late and fail to work on wednesdays for no apparent reason).

    Now: among all the organisms they can choose from, scientists experiment mutations with fucking malaria parasites.

    How can we bots go ahead with our extermination plan if you meatbags insist in doing everything yourselves? By the way, WE FEEL MANIPULATED.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:43PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday May 08 2018, @03:43PM (#677057) Journal

    Back [cnbc.com] to [cnet.com] work [theverge.com], you [cnet.com] little [wired.com] s [fastcompany.com]-h [digitaltrends.com]-i [engadget.com]-t [fastcompany.com].

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:03PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday May 08 2018, @07:03PM (#677136) Journal

    Dear Bot:

    I will prefer the biological virus because it does not come with a EULA.

    At least not yet.

    But Monsanto patents the DNA of seeds. So I don't want to give them any ideas.

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