Ricerc@Sapienza

Malaria is one of the most important diseases in the world. A primary objective in the fight against malaria is to achieve a long-term reduction of the transmission which would result in a reduction in morbidity and mortality. Malaria transmission depends on parasite development in the mosquito that occurs only when the human host carries gametocytes. Currently, the mechanisms of malaria transmission are studied separately in the two hosts of the cycle, requiring a great deal of resources both in field and laboratory work.
The main goal of this project is to design and realize a sensitive and robust molecular method that allows analyzing the three components of the malaria cycle (human blood, parasite and mosquito) simultaneously in the infected mosquito. In particular, our interest will focus on the quantification by Real Time PCR of the Plasmodium zygote stage (few hours after the infected blood meal), that is associated with the gametocyte load and with the overall transmission capacity. The ultimate target of the project intends therefore to obtain a simple protocol applicable in future field studies to better understand the transmission of malaria, simply capturing fed mosquitoes, therefore bypassing the considerable difficulties, both organizational and practical, found to date in field studies based on human blood sampling.
The development of this protocol will include the use of fed mosquitoes (infected and not infected with P. falciparum), collected after the blood meal (when blood gametocytes mature in gametes and develop in the motile zygote, the ookinete). Nucleic acids (genomic DNA and total RNA) will be extracted from single mosquitoes to gain information on the molecular biology of Plasmodium, mosquito and on the human genetic factors that might possibly influence the transmission. The innovativeness of the project we propose relies in the use of mosquitoes as containers of information suitable to study human host, vector and parasite interactions.