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Current Results. Objective. Background A disease of the underprivileged 2.5 billion largely impoverished people are at risk for malaria More than 1 million people die of malaria a year 1 in every 5 child deaths in Africa is due to malaria Malaria is both worsened by
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Current Results Objective • Background • A disease of the underprivileged • 2.5 billion largely impoverished people are at risk for malaria • More than 1 million people die of malaria a year • 1 in every 5 child deaths in Africa is due to malaria • Malaria is both worsened by • and contributes to the poverty • level of the communities it • infects • Parasitic Lifecycle • Complex and multi-stage • Requires larges amounts of protein import and export • 13 transmembrane, non-FIKK proteins • 1 signal peptide, non-FIKK protein PFF1370w 340 MAL8P1.113 5896 PF11_0521 3223 FIKKs PFEMP ? PF11_0156 777 MAL7P1.127 1859 MAL8P1.42 1378 PF11_0127 2451 PFA0380w 1586 PFF1370w 3176 MAL8PI.23 8879 PF11_0464 2146 Finding Vaccine Candidates for Malaria PF14_0320 1571 PFI0160w 3241 immunoglobulin • Find good vaccine candidates among malaria proteins • Assumptions • The parasite is affecting the host cell through direct regulatory processes • Most regulatory domains are intracellular • To affect the human proteins, the parasitic proteins need to be exported or presented on the membrane surface • Regulatory proteins contain highly conserved genes that could be consistently recognized by the body’s immune system PF14_0264 2433 peptidase A Bioinformatics Approach Protein Transmembrane Kinase Signal Other Continuing Work Our Methods • Expression data • Is the protozoa expressing this protein while in the human red blood cell? • Discover more signaling motifs • Predict disulfide bridges • Indicates extracellular location • Asses the rate of regulatory and transmembrane proteins in non-parasitic eukaryotes • Assess accuracy of annotations and predictions for malaria Rationale • 1. Find malarial proteins containing regulatory domains • 2. Investigate the other domains identified for these proteins • Check for predicted transmembrane regions • 4. Check for annotated signal peptide Allison Weis Professor Dietlind Gerloff Department of Bimolecular Engineering Summer 2008 References: World Health Organization http://www.who.int/topics/malaria/en/ Przyborski J. and Lanzer M. “The Malarial Secretome”. Nature. Vol 306. 10. December 2004.