22.02.12
The most dangerous malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum , is an unusually versatile bug. The single-celled safecracker carries a wide collection of protein "keys" that it can use to jimmy receptor "locks" on the surface of red blood cells, tricking the cells into letting it in. Block one of these entry points with a drug, and the parasite just uses a different key.
But now, researchers believe they may have found a master key that the parasite uses—a surface protein without which it's unable to invade blood cells. The researchers hope the finding will help them design a new malaria vaccine.
Such a vaccine has been "a difficult nut to crack," Gavin Wright of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, U.K., said at a press briefing about the study in London on Monday. Not only does P. falciparum have numerous keys—scientifically known as ligands—at its disposal, figuring out which ligand key interacts with which of the hundreds of receptors on a cell's surface is a challenge. And it's difficult to study in the lab because ligands bound to receptors quickly rip apart when scientists put them through the chemical washes and treatments needed to identify them.
Source: Science AAAS