Is chemical genetics the new frontier for malaria biology?

Trends Pharmacol Sci

Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, PA 19104, USA.

Published: February 2008

Malaria is a global disease, causing at least 500 million clinical cases and more than one million deaths each year. Moreover, drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum, the organism that causes most malaria-associated deaths, has become a major problem. Therefore, discovery and investigation of novel targets for anti-malarial drug design is essential to combat this disease. The malarial genome has been sequenced, revealing approximately 5500 genes. The current post-genomic challenge is functionally to evaluate the essential genes and validate them for therapeutic design. Unfortunately, standard genetics techniques are limited in scope because of low transfection efficiency and a lack of knockdown techniques, thereby rendering the analysis of essential genes difficult.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tips.2007.11.008DOI Listing

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