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posted by chromas on Friday May 25 2018, @03:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the safe-harbor dept.

When the malaria-causing Plasmodium parasite first slips into the human bloodstream, injected by the bite of an infected mosquito, it does not immediately target red blood cells.

Instead, it seeks refuge inside the liver and rapidly reproduces, copying itself as many as 30,000 times in the span of 48 hours.

After building strength in numbers, the parasite leaves the liver and escapes into the blood stream, invading red blood cells and triggering the devastating disease.

The battle against malaria usually focuses on either helping people evade infected mosquitoes or developing strategies to kill the parasite after it raids red blood cells. But a team of Duke University researchers wants to take a different tactic -- disrupting the parasite while it lurks inside the liver.

In a new study, the team shows that the Plasmodium parasite tricks liver cells into pumping out a protein called aquaporin-3, and then steals the protein for itself. Using an inhibitor to disable aquaporin-3 curtails the parasite's ability to reproduce inside the liver, the researchers report in PLOS Pathogens.

"This parasite found a way to manipulate the host's liver cells to make it favorable for this replication event," said Emily Derbyshire, an assistant professor of chemistry at Duke. "This suggests that maybe we can develop drugs to try to target the host to prevent malaria."

After arriving at the liver, Plasmodium forces its way into liver cells, stealing a bit of the cell membrane to form a small pouch inside the cell. This pouch, called a vacuole, provides a safe harbor while the parasite grows and divides, stealing nutrients and proteins from the host cell along the way.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @04:13AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2018, @04:13AM (#683883)

    That's why the Russkies fortify their livers with vodka. You never hear of central asian turco-mongols dying of malaria, do you? Do you? That's because, that's right, vodka.

    All hail Rakya. All hail.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 25 2018, @04:30AM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 25 2018, @04:30AM (#683885) Journal

    When I think of mosquitoes, I automatically associate them with the cold wasteland called Russia. 🇷🇺 🦟🦟🦟

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    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Osamabobama on Friday May 25 2018, @06:58PM (1 child)

      by Osamabobama (5842) on Friday May 25 2018, @06:58PM (#684145)

      Despite your apparent sarcasm, there is such an association. Here's a massive Russian mosquito swarm [upi.com] from 2017, a couple hundred miles north of Sochi.

      Here's a 2015 story about the Russian mosquito festival [bbc.com].

      Here's an excerpt from a 2009 New Yorker story [newyorker.com], Travels in Siberia, by Ian Frazier:

      I have been in mosquito swarms in beaver meadows in northern Michigan, in boreal wetlands in Canada, and near Alaska’s Yukon River. Western Siberia has more. ... Usually mosquitoes cluster in a cloud around their targets, but as Volodya made dinner I observed a thick and proximate cloud surrounding him head to toe, and then a whole other sort of candidate swarm around that inner swarm, and then more in all directions, minutely enlivening the sky.

      Of course, all that being said, those mosquitoes aren't known for malaria, for what that's worth.

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