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The Apicomplexa are a large phylum of parasitic alveolates. Most of them possess a unique form of organelle that comprises a type of plastid called an apicoplast, and an apical complex structure. The organelle is an adaptation that the apicomplexan applies in penetration of a host cell.
Plasmodium is a genus of unicellular eukaryotes that are obligate parasites of vertebrates and insects. The life cycles of Plasmodium species involve development in a blood-feeding insect host which then injects parasites into a vertebrate host during a blood meal. Parasites grow within a vertebrate body tissue before entering the bloodstream to infect red blood cells. The ensuing destruction of host red blood cells can result in disease, called malaria. During this infection, some parasites are picked up by a blood-feeding insect, continuing the life cycle.
Plasmodium falciparum is a unicellular protozoan parasite of humans, and the deadliest species of Plasmodium that causes malaria in humans. The parasite is transmitted through the bite of a female Anopheles mosquito and causes the disease's most dangerous form, falciparum malaria. It is responsible for around 50% of all malaria cases. P. falciparum is therefore regarded as the deadliest parasite in humans. It is also associated with the development of blood cancer and is classified as Group 2A carcinogen.
The Wellcome Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a non-profit British genomics and genetics research institute, primarily funded by the Wellcome Trust.
Plasmodium ovale is a species of parasitic protozoa that causes tertian malaria in humans. It is one of several species of Plasmodium parasites that infect humans including Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax which are responsible for most malarial infection. It is rare compared to these two parasites, and substantially less dangerous than P. falciparum.
Plasmodium malariae is a parasitic protozoan that causes malaria in humans. It is one of several species of Plasmodium parasites that infect other organisms as pathogens, also including Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, responsible for most malarial infection. Found worldwide, it causes a so-called "benign malaria", not nearly as dangerous as that produced by P. falciparum or P. vivax. The signs include fevers that recur at approximately three-day intervals – a quartan fever or quartan malaria – longer than the two-day (tertian) intervals of the other malarial parasites.
Plasmodium knowlesi is a parasite that causes malaria in humans and other primates. It is found throughout Southeast Asia, and is the most common cause of human malaria in Malaysia. Like other Plasmodium species, P. knowlesi has a life cycle that requires infection of both a mosquito and a warm-blooded host. While the natural warm-blooded hosts of P. knowlesi are likely various Old World monkeys, humans can be infected by P. knowlesi if they are fed upon by infected mosquitoes. P. knowlesi is a eukaryote in the phylum Apicomplexa, genus Plasmodium, and subgenus Plasmodium. It is most closely related to the human parasite Plasmodium vivax as well as other Plasmodium species that infect non-human primates.
Plasmodium berghei is a species in the genus Plasmodium subgenus Vinckeia.
The Anopheles gambiae complex consists of at least seven morphologically indistinguishable species of mosquitoes in the genus Anopheles. The complex was recognised in the 1960s and includes the most important vectors of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly of the most dangerous malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. It is one of the most efficient malaria vectors known. The An. gambiae mosquito additionally transmits Wuchereria bancrofti which causes Lymphatic philariasis, more commonly known as elephantiasis.
Laverania is a subgenus of the parasite genus Plasmodium. Infection with these species results in malaria. The subgenus was first described in 1958.
BLAT is a pairwise sequence alignment algorithm that was developed by Jim Kent at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) in the early 2000s to assist in the assembly and annotation of the human genome. It was designed primarily to decrease the time needed to align millions of mouse genomic reads and expressed sequence tags against the human genome sequence. The alignment tools of the time were not capable of performing these operations in a manner that would allow a regular update of the human genome assembly. Compared to pre-existing tools, BLAT was ~500 times faster with performing mRNA/DNA alignments and ~50 times faster with protein/protein alignments.
RUF6 is a non-coding RNA (ncRNA) present within the plasmodium genome. Bioinformatic studies predicted that RUF6 was present within the plasmodium genome and the expression of this ncRNA was verified by Northern Blot. The location of this ncRNAs was subsequently mapped within the P. falciparum strain 3DF genome by primer extension. This ncRNA was shown to be encoded for by multiple genes that are clustered together within the plasmodium genome. These clusters were located in regions that flanked the malaria surface antigens RIFIN and VAR genes or in locations that are known for being recombination hot spots. The function of RUF6 is still unknown but from knowing the location of RUF6 within the plasmodium genome it has been suggested that RUF6 may have a role in the expression or maintenance of the malaria surface antigens but this has yet to be determined.
RUF3 is a non-coding RNA(ncRNA) present within the plasmodium genome. Bioinformatic studies predicted that RUF3 was present within the plasmodium genome and the expression of this ncRNA was verified by Northern Blot. The location of this ncRNAs was subsequently mapped within the P. falciparum strain 3DF genome by primer extension. RUF3 is a novel RNA of unknown function but has shown to contain some structural similarity with the H/ACA box snoRNA but no known targets have been identified.
The UCSC Genome Browser is an on-line, and downloadable, genome browser hosted by the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). It is an interactive website offering access to genome sequence data from a variety of vertebrate and invertebrate species and major model organisms, integrated with a large collection of aligned annotations. The Browser is a graphical viewer optimized to support fast interactive performance and is an open-source, web-based tool suite built on top of a MySQL database for rapid visualization, examination, and querying of the data at many levels. The Genome Browser Database, browsing tools, downloadable data files, and documentation can all be found on the UCSC Genome Bioinformatics website.
PlasmoDB is a biological database for the genus Plasmodium. The database is a member of the EuPathDB project. The database contains extensive genome, proteome and metabolome information relating to malaria parasites.
The Eukaryotic Pathgen Database, or EuPathDB, is a database of bioinformatic and experimental data related to a variety of eukaryotic pathogens. It was established in 2006 under a National Institutes of Health program to create Bioinformatics Resource Centers to facilitate research on pathogens that may pose biodefense threats. EuPathDB stores data related to its organisms of interest and provides tools for searching through and analyzing the data. It currently consists of 14 component databases, each dedicated to a certain research topic. EuPathDB includes:
Plasmodium brasilianum is a parasite that infects many species of platyrrhine monkeys in South and Central America.
Jessica Kissinger is a Distinguished Research Professor at the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia and director of the Institute of Bioinformatics. Her research focus is on the evolution, assembly and data curation of protozoan parasite genomes, particularly Cryptosporidium, Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium.
References
- ↑ Chakrabarti K.; Pearson, M; Grate, L; Sterne-Weiler, T; Deans, J; Donohue, JP; Ares Jr, M (2007). "Structural RNAs of known and unknown function identified in malaria parasites by comparative genomics and RNA analysis". RNA. 13 (11): 923–39. doi:10.1261/rna.751807. PMC 2040097 . PMID 17901154.
- ↑ Mangan, M.; Williams J.; Lathe, S.; Karolchik, D.; Lathe, W. (2008). "UCSC genome browser: deep support for molecular biomedical research". Biotechnology Annual Review. 14: 63–108. doi:10.1016/S1387-2656(08)00003-3. ISBN 9780444532268. PMID 18606360.
- ↑ Kuhn, R.; et al. (2009). "The UCSC Genome Browser Database: update 2009". Nucleic Acids Research. 37 (Database issue): D755–D761. doi:10.1093/nar/gkn875. PMC 2686463 . PMID 18996895.
- ↑ "The Plasmodium genome resource". PlasmoDB.org. Retrieved 2015-05-07.
