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Review

Nature Reviews Microbiology 4, 344–357 (1 May 2006) | doi:10.1038/nrmicro1392

Plasmodium post-genomics: better the bug you know?

Taco W. A. Kooij , Chris J. Janse & Andrew P. Waters

Since the publication of the sequence of the genome of Plasmodium falciparum, the major causative agent of human malaria, many post-genomic studies have been completed. Invaluably, these data can now be analysed comparatively owing to the availability of a significant amount of genome-sequence data from several closely related model species of Plasmodium and accompanying global proteome and transcriptome studies. This review summarizes our current knowledge and how this has already been ? and will continue to be ? exploited in the search for vaccines and drugs against this most significant infectious disease of the tropics.