Malaria is caused by a eukaryotic microbe of the Plasmodium genus, and is responsible for more deaths than all other parasitic diseases combined. In order to transmit from the human host to the mosquito vector, the parasite has to differentiate to its sexual stage, referred to as the gametocyte stage. Unlike primary sex determination in mammals, which occurs at the chromosome level, it is not known what causes this unicellular parasite to form males and females. New research at Stockholm University has implemented high-resolution genomic tools to map the global repertoire of genes of gametocyte development towards the male or the female sexual fates.

In a recently published study, the Ankarklev group at the Department of Molecular Biosciences has opened up for a more effective malaria treatment. Watch the TV4 News segment covering the research. Watch the news segment (in Swedish) Read more about the research

For the malaria parasite to reach the blood of its human host, it must first enter the liver, where only a small number of parasites differentiate and replicate for upwards of seven days, making it a bottleneck in the parasite’s lifecycle. This bottleneck makes the liver stage an optimal target for effective and long-lasting vaccines against the disease. Using Spatial Transcriptomics and single-cell RNA-sequencing technologies, researchers at Stockholm University have for the first time managed to create a spatio-temporal map of malaria infection in the mouse liver. A study that was recently published in Nature Communications.