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New research on how the malaria parasite survives inside the cells of humans could potentially lead to better treatments for the worldwide disease.
Published in Nature today, a team based at The Australian National University revealed why the malaria parasite - Plasmodium falciparum - increases the sodium, or salt, content inside its host’s red blood cells.
“Once they’ve infiltrated their human host, malaria parasites hide inside the red blood cells to avoid being detected by the immune system,” explained Dr Kevin Saliba, a Medical School lecturer based in the School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BaMBi) at ANU.
“Scientists have known for some time that once inside the red blood cell, the parasite alters the balance of ions in their host cell, increasing the amount of sodium. Until now it has not been clear whether this is something that is actually important for the parasite. What we’ve shown is that the increased sodium plays a crucial role in the mechanism by which the parasite takes up a key nutrient”, Dr Saliba said.
Dr Rowena Martin, another member of the BaMBi team, described how they have discovered a protein that enables the parasite to exploit the increased sodium levels inside the red blood cell, using the sodium to fuel the uptake of phosphate, a substance required by the parasite for a whole range of biochemical processes.
“The parasite needs phosphate to survive. The protein we have described binds to sodium and phosphate in the host blood cell and transports them, together, into the parasite” Dr Martin said.
“This research has revealed yet again just how cunning this parasite is. It manipulates the salt content of its host blood cell and then uses what is essentially a salt-powered vacuum cleaner to steal a key nutrient from its host,” BaMBi head Professor Kiaran Kirk said. “If we could block this system we could starve the parasite to death, and this could well be the basis for a new antimalarial therapy,” Professor Kirk said.
Professor Kirk and Associate Professor Stefan Broer were senior authors on the Nature paper, which also included input from scientists at the University of Melbourne. The research team received funding from the Australian Research Council and the National Medical Health Research Council.
Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.
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