Hunting for the genetic key to wiping out malaria

Fotis Kafatos , a pioneer of developmental biology, genomics and insect molecular analysis, joins Imperial from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) where he served as Director General for twelve years. Moving to Imperial because of the opportunities to work with researchers in a range of complementary disciplines, he and his team are collaborating with other groups at the College to unravel the immune system of Anopheles mosquitoes and understand how they transmit the malaria parasite Plasmodium. This is a far from simple process, according to Professor Kafatos, who explains that malaria parasites from the blood of infected mammals complete their development cycle inside the mosquito, maturing and travelling from the gut to the saliva glands. "The mosquito is not simply a hypodermic needle, taking infected blood from one person and passing it to another when it feeds," he says. "There is a devilishly complex interaction process going on. Understanding how it works is a key to preventing infection from spreading." Professor Kafatos is joined in his work by his colleague and research collaborator from EMBL Dr George Christophides , now a senior lecturer at Imperial. At EMBL, they and their co-workers made major strides in understanding this process, discovering numerous genes that act as antagonists, which suppress parasite transmission, or agonists, which protect the parasite against antagonists. They found that when antagonists are inactivated, parasite numbers increase substantially; when agonists are inactivated, parasite numbers drop dramatically. The team is now continuing work based on this discovery at Imperial, and foresees both transgenic and chemical methods being developed to block progression of the parasite in the mosquito. Professor Fotis comments: "If we can discover safe chemicals that knock out key agonists, we could halt malaria transmission. Curing the mosquito would complement current attempts to develop malaria vaccines or drugs." In addition to his continuing work on the genomics of mosquitoes, Dr Christophides is already beginning to look at ways to apply the groups work and is collaborating with scientists in Cameroon. He says: "Our ultimate aim is to bring our lab work to the field to rigorously test whether and how we can interfere with malaria transmission - that's the only way to really find out if we are using the correct approach." As one of the early leaders of insect gene analysis, Professor Kafatos is excited to be drawing real practical applications from abstract scientific research. "This mosquito is the most important insect for humanity," he says. "By making it a model for understanding the biology, genomics and immune system of insects, we hope to make a real impact on peoples lives." Source: "here":[ http://www.checkbiotech.org/root/index.cfm?fuseaction=subtopics&topic_id=1&subtopic_id=4&doc_id=11822&start=1&control=411&page_start=1&page_nr=151&pg=1].

---

Related articles

GM mosquito could fight malaria - A genetically-modified (GM) strain of malaria-resistant mosquito has been created that is better able to survive than disease-carrying insects (22.3.2007)