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Malaria

The gatekeeper revealed

Nature volume 459, pages 918–919 (2009)Cite this article

A molecular machine used by the malaria parasite to export its protein armoury into the host cell has at last been identified, providing researchers with a potentially invaluable therapeutic target.

Malaria is a devastating infectious disease that claims around one million lives each year. The most severe form is caused by a unicellular parasite called Plasmodium falciparum — a formidable foe that has repeatedly frustrated attempts to eradicate it. P. falciparum has many survival tricks: it constantly varies the surface proteins presented to the host1, thereby confounding the host immune system, and it rapidly develops resistance to drugs2. In this issue (page 945), de Koning-Ward and colleagues3 get to the bottom of yet another of the parasite's unsettling talents, the ability to inject hundreds of its own proteins into the host cell.

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Figure 1: Exporting malaria proteins across the vacuole.

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Author information

Affiliations

  1. and the Department of Cellular Biology, Sarah B. Reiff and Boris Striepen are at the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, USA. striepen@cb.uga.edu

    Sarah B. Reiff & Boris Striepen

Authors
  1. Sarah B. Reiff
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  2. Boris Striepen
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Reiff, S., Striepen, B. The gatekeeper revealed. Nature 459, 918–919 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/459918a

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