Last Updated: 07/10/2025
Phenotypic plasticity in the adaptation of malaria parasites to changing environments: a round trip
Objectives
The overall objective of the ERC-Consolidator project is to determine the “adaptation machinery,” that is, the epigenetic mechanisms that allow malaria parasites to change rapidly, survive, and transmit in response to a heterogeneous environment and in the most critical (and unpredictable) part of their life cycle: the mosquito. By capturing this mechanism, researchers can anticipate its evolution and possibly develop new ways to eradicate malaria.
The specific objectives are to:
- obtain the genomes of Plasmodium falciparum clones isolated from malaria-endemic areas and, to use these clones to perform in vivo infection assays in mosquitoes to determine their phenotype; and
- examine the transcriptome changes that occur and investigate the regulatory mechanisms underlying the different cell phenotypes using single-cell methodologies.
With this, the research team hopes to define the cell trajectories during the development of P. falciparum in the mosquito and reveal the existence of natural cell-to-cell heterogeneity.
How pathogens adapt to a changing world is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Malaria parasites face rapid changes in their transmission environment, both within the host and during their transition between hosts—mosquitoes and humans—changing phenotypes to adapt.
The experiments will serve as a proof of concept for the application of single-cell epigenomic and transcriptomic technologies in Plasmodium—pioneering approaches never before implemented in this field—in order to, in a second stage (as proposed in the original ERC proposal), carry out experimental evolution and functional genomics experiments to elucidate the epigenetic mechanisms and regulators that control transcriptional variation and adaptation of the malaria parasite to heterogeneity in its environment.
Jan 2020
$68,391
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