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lab’s mosquito insectory
The University of Nottingham
A researcher who battled malaria infection as a child is now fighting the disease in her lab and has made a discovery that may bring us closer to successfully disrupting the malaria parasite life-cycle.
Rita Tewari, PhD, of The University of Nottingham in the UK, and her colleagues have completed what she calls a “Herculean study” investigating the roles that 30 protein phosphatases and 72 kinases play as the malaria parasite develops.
Dr Tewari and her colleagues reported the results of this study in Cell Host and Microbe.
“This latest study identifies how protein phosphatases regulate parasite development and differentiation,” she said. “Our research provides a systematic functional analysis for all the 30 phosphatases in Plasmodium berghei, the parasite responsible for causing malaria in rodents.”
“These enzymes work in tandem with the protein kinases identified by the same team in a complementary study carried out in 2010. If we can find out what proteins are essential for these parasites to develop and divide, maybe we can target those proteins and arrest them with drugs or vaccines.”
Born and raised in Delhi, India, Dr Tewari had malaria 7 times as a child. She now leads her own malaria research lab at The University of Nottingham, complete with her own mosquito insectary.
It has taken her team, together with collaborators at Imperial College London, 8 years to identify every one of the protein phosphatases and protein kinases responsible for malaria parasite development.
Protein kinases and phosphatases are crucial for many stages of the malaria parasite lifecycle. And Dr Tewari’s group has been investigating protein kinases and phosphatases to better understand the basic developmental biology of malaria parasites.
Using a number of molecular cell biology and biochemical techniques, the researchers found that 16 of the 30 phosphatase genes they identified could not be knocked out. This suggests some of these genes could be future drug targets, as their presence is critical to parasite growth.
“Interestingly, out of the genes that could be knocked out [14], 6 were found to be crucial for sexual development and, hence, could be drug targets for parasite transmission to and from the mosquito,” Dr Tewari said.
“The research gathered here using the mouse malaria parasite can be directly related to the human malaria parasite, as many of the genes share a very similar homology, and symptoms of the diseases are very similar.” 
lab’s mosquito insectory
The University of Nottingham
A researcher who battled malaria infection as a child is now fighting the disease in her lab and has made a discovery that may bring us closer to successfully disrupting the malaria parasite life-cycle.
Rita Tewari, PhD, of The University of Nottingham in the UK, and her colleagues have completed what she calls a “Herculean study” investigating the roles that 30 protein phosphatases and 72 kinases play as the malaria parasite develops.
Dr Tewari and her colleagues reported the results of this study in Cell Host and Microbe.
“This latest study identifies how protein phosphatases regulate parasite development and differentiation,” she said. “Our research provides a systematic functional analysis for all the 30 phosphatases in Plasmodium berghei, the parasite responsible for causing malaria in rodents.”
“These enzymes work in tandem with the protein kinases identified by the same team in a complementary study carried out in 2010. If we can find out what proteins are essential for these parasites to develop and divide, maybe we can target those proteins and arrest them with drugs or vaccines.”
Born and raised in Delhi, India, Dr Tewari had malaria 7 times as a child. She now leads her own malaria research lab at The University of Nottingham, complete with her own mosquito insectary.
It has taken her team, together with collaborators at Imperial College London, 8 years to identify every one of the protein phosphatases and protein kinases responsible for malaria parasite development.
Protein kinases and phosphatases are crucial for many stages of the malaria parasite lifecycle. And Dr Tewari’s group has been investigating protein kinases and phosphatases to better understand the basic developmental biology of malaria parasites.
Using a number of molecular cell biology and biochemical techniques, the researchers found that 16 of the 30 phosphatase genes they identified could not be knocked out. This suggests some of these genes could be future drug targets, as their presence is critical to parasite growth.
“Interestingly, out of the genes that could be knocked out [14], 6 were found to be crucial for sexual development and, hence, could be drug targets for parasite transmission to and from the mosquito,” Dr Tewari said.
“The research gathered here using the mouse malaria parasite can be directly related to the human malaria parasite, as many of the genes share a very similar homology, and symptoms of the diseases are very similar.”
lab’s mosquito insectory
The University of Nottingham
A researcher who battled malaria infection as a child is now fighting the disease in her lab and has made a discovery that may bring us closer to successfully disrupting the malaria parasite life-cycle.
Rita Tewari, PhD, of The University of Nottingham in the UK, and her colleagues have completed what she calls a “Herculean study” investigating the roles that 30 protein phosphatases and 72 kinases play as the malaria parasite develops.
Dr Tewari and her colleagues reported the results of this study in Cell Host and Microbe.
“This latest study identifies how protein phosphatases regulate parasite development and differentiation,” she said. “Our research provides a systematic functional analysis for all the 30 phosphatases in Plasmodium berghei, the parasite responsible for causing malaria in rodents.”
“These enzymes work in tandem with the protein kinases identified by the same team in a complementary study carried out in 2010. If we can find out what proteins are essential for these parasites to develop and divide, maybe we can target those proteins and arrest them with drugs or vaccines.”
Born and raised in Delhi, India, Dr Tewari had malaria 7 times as a child. She now leads her own malaria research lab at The University of Nottingham, complete with her own mosquito insectary.
It has taken her team, together with collaborators at Imperial College London, 8 years to identify every one of the protein phosphatases and protein kinases responsible for malaria parasite development.
Protein kinases and phosphatases are crucial for many stages of the malaria parasite lifecycle. And Dr Tewari’s group has been investigating protein kinases and phosphatases to better understand the basic developmental biology of malaria parasites.
Using a number of molecular cell biology and biochemical techniques, the researchers found that 16 of the 30 phosphatase genes they identified could not be knocked out. This suggests some of these genes could be future drug targets, as their presence is critical to parasite growth.
“Interestingly, out of the genes that could be knocked out [14], 6 were found to be crucial for sexual development and, hence, could be drug targets for parasite transmission to and from the mosquito,” Dr Tewari said.
“The research gathered here using the mouse malaria parasite can be directly related to the human malaria parasite, as many of the genes share a very similar homology, and symptoms of the diseases are very similar.”