Genomic-based diagnostics for elimination and eradication of Plasmodium

Objectives

The overall goal of this project is to understand threats to the malaria elimination/eradication agenda. As effective control measures are deployed, parasite populations change due to selective pressures (e.g. as applied by drugs and vaccines) and to local population bottlenecks. In the past years, population biology tools have been developed that permit effective, efficient monitoring of parasite transmission and population dynamics through simple genetic testing of parasites sampled from the population. The proposal is to develop and validate those methods to measure changes in response to intervention, and to discover genes associated with key parasite properties important to control.