Mutant parasite could stop malaria in its tracks

University of Nottingham Malaria experts have found a way of disabling one of the many phosphatase proteins which breathe life into the malaria parasite. The result is a mutant which is unable to complete the complex life cycle crucial to its development. The discovery could help to design drugs to save thousands of lives. The research led by Rita Tewari in the Centre for Genetics and Genomics in the School of Biology in collaboration with the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, the University of Leicester and the MRC National Institute for Medical Research, has been published in the prestigious open access journal PLOS Pathogens . The researchers, funded by the MRC and the Wellcome Trust, have worked out how the unique enzyme — PPKL phosphatase — controls the development of the parasite at an essential stage for transmission. By removing this enzyme other proteins fail to work properly and the resulting mutant has the wrong shape to burrow through the stomach wall of the female Anopheles mosquito and pass on the disease to humans. Approximately 40 phosphatase enzymes are present in the genome of malaria parasite — PPKL is the first whose function is identified.