© Dr. Gary Gaugler/Science Photo Library
A mosquito alights on a human victim and pierces the skin, injecting its salivary mixture of anticoagulants to make blood flow smoothly while feeding. At least 300 million times each year, that mixture comes with unwanted travelers:
Understanding malaria's complex life cycle remains as challenging to researchers as it is critical for public health. The global killer is difficult to culture, and traditional genetic and biochemical tools are largely ineffective. In 2002 an international consortium published the 26 Mb genome of Plasmodium falciparum, the deadliest malaria species.1 Overcoming significant technical obstacles, the sequence represented an "entry into the biology of the parasite," says Philip Rosenthal at San Francisco General Hospital. Still, 60% of P. falciparum's nearly 5,500 predicted genes had no known ...
