Functional analysis of Plasmodium vivax dihydrofolate reductase-thymidylate synthase genes through stable transformation of Plasmodium falciparum.

ABSTRACT: Mechanisms of drug resistance in Plasmodium vivax have been difficult to study partially because of the difficulties in culturing the parasite in vitro. This hampers monitoring drug resistance and research to develop or evaluate new drugs. There is an urgent need for a novel method to study mechanisms of P. vivax drug resistance. In this paper we report the development and application of the first Plasmodium falciparum expression system to stably express P. vivax dhfr-ts alleles. We used the piggyBac transposition system for the rapid integration of wild-type, single mutant (117N) and quadruple mutant (57L/58R/61M/117T) pvdhfr-ts alleles into the P. falciparum genome. The majority (81%) of the integrations occurred in non-coding regions of the genome; however, the levels of pvdhfr transcri

SUBMITTER: Auliff AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3392216 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature