Despite tremendous control efforts, Plasmodium vivax malaria remains an important public health problem in many countries. Yet, progress in P. vivax research has been hampered largely by the lack of technology to culture this parasite in vitro. The on-going P. vivax genome project is expected to be a great contribution in advancing our understanding of the parasite biology and pathogenesis. To make better use of the genome information and accelerate gene discovery, we propose to (1) determine the proteomes of the blood stages and sporozoites of the P. vivax parasite, and (2) perform a comparative analysis of the P. vivax proteomic data with the proteomics of other malaria parasites. This project is both timely and feasible in light of the impending completion of the P. vivax genome, our recent achievement in P. vivax in vitro culture techniques, and our experience with the high-accuracy mass spectrometry-based proteomics. This high- throughput proteomic analysis of selected P. vivax stages will yield valuable information about stage-specific protein expression in P. vivax, improve the gene annotation of P. vivax genome, and provide a rapid and sensitive means for drug and vaccine development. Therefore, our long-term goal is to achieve a better understanding of the fundamental biology of the P. vivax parasite, which will help the design of integrative approaches for malaria control. The malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax causes approximately 70-80 million human malaria cases annually and is a major public health problem in many countries. Its recent resurgence in prevalence and emergence of drug- resistant parasite strains have raised a great concern for the future control of malaria. ? ? ?
| Roobsoong, Wanlapa; Roytrakul, Sittiruk; Sattabongkot, Jetsumon et al. (2011) Determination of the Plasmodium vivax schizont stage proteome. J Proteomics 74:1701-10 |
