What is Malaria? |
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Malaria is
a mosquito-borne disease that causes over 2.7 million deaths per year
according to estimates by the World Health Organization. Scientists
in the Life Sciences Division
and the Center for X-Ray
Optics (CXRO) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are working
with the newly developed x-ray microscope at the Advanced Light Source
to study this disease.
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Malaria: A
Mosquito-Borne Disease of the Blood
The Life Cycle of the Malaria Parasite
The life cycle of the malaria parasite in a human or animal begins when an infected mosquito transmits malaria sporozoites to a new host. The sporozoites travel to the liver, where they invade hepatocytes (liver cells) and multiply thousands of times over the following two weeks before rupturing out of the liver into the blood stream. During the first 48 hours after infecting a red blood cell, a parasite goes through several phases of development . The first phase is the ring stage, in which the parasite begins to metabolize hemoglobin. The next phase is the trophozoite stage, during which the parasite metabolizes most of the hemoglobin, gets larger, and prepares to reproduce more parasites. Finally, the parasite divides asexually to form a multinucleated schizont. At the end of the cycle, the red blood cell bursts open and the parasites are dispersed to infect more red blood cells.
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Next: How are cultures of the malaria-causing parasite prepared for study? | |
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