Scientists have unveiled a new tool for studying the highly variable traits that allow malaria parasites to stick to red blood cells and evade the immune system. The study, published today as a Reviewed Preprint in eLife , introduces an important approach for generating Plasmodium falciparum parasite lines that express specific variants of a sticky adhesin molecule, according to eLife's editors. They say that it also provides compelling evidence for an innovative and rigorous platform that can explore how malaria causes disease.
The ability of the human malaria parasite to stick to red blood cells – called cytoadhesion –, allows it to escape clearance by the immune system and cause the build-up of infected red blood cells in major organs, with life-threatening consequences. Cytoadhesion is facilitated by members of a protein family called 'P. falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1' – or PfEMP1.
Each parasite produces only one type of PfEMP1 at any time, governed by its genes, and it can switch between different forms of PfEMP1 to avoid immune recognition. "A key problem in studying PfEMP1 is that when you grow malaria in the lab, it results in a population of parasites with diverse PfEMP1 proteins with different properties," explains lead author Jakob Cronshagen, at the time of the study a doctoral student shared between the Bruchhaus and Spielmann labs at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany. "Researchers have tried to select for para.