Researchers are making good headway in a project began in 1996 to sequence Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest strain of malaria.
Malcolm Gardner of The Institute of Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland, told The Scientist, “I would say we have over 99% of the genome in the database.”
That last one percent may prove to be somewhat tricky, however. Five of malaria’s 14 chromosomes have been completely mapped, but there are some parts of the malaria genome which have proven extremely difficult to map. Part of the problem is that many of this strain’s genes do not have any similarity to genes in other organisms, and many of those genes are downright strange.
On the other hand, researcher Michael Ferdig told The Scientist that these oddities about malaria may help researchers better understand how the disease operates and, hopefully, give new ideas on how to counteract the disease. According to Ferdig,
The tantalizing bit is that we’ll discover the malarial parasite has a distinct way of operating, a distinct way of evolving. Common sense tells you that’s usually not the case, but these are the kinds of questions you can’t start to answer until you have the whole genome.
Excellent news for those parts of the world still afflicted by malaria.
Source:
Closing in on the malaria genome. Brendan A. Maher, The Scientist 16[6]:28, March 18, 2002.