Malaria Genomics Learning

This is a collection of resources for learning about malaria genomics. It is intended for researchers who are new to the field and want to learn more about the genomics of malaria parasites.

Introduction

Malaria is a disease caused by parasites of the genus Plasmodium. The most severe form of malaria is caused by Plasmodium falciparum, which is responsible for the majority of malaria-related deaths. Malaria is transmitted to humans through the bites of infected mosquitoes. The parasites then multiply in the liver and red blood cells, leading to the symptoms of the disease. One of the major challenges in treating malaria is the emergence of drug resistance. This is particularly problematic in the case of P. falciparum, which has developed resistance to multiple antimalarial drugs. Detecting drug resistance mutations in the parasite’s genome can help guide treatment decisions and prevent the spread of resistance.

Learning objectives:

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Use the command line to run malaria-profiler on next-generation sequencing data of P. falciparum isolates
• Analyse the results of a malaria-profiler run to identify drug resistance mutations
• Use pyMoi to characterise the polygenomic patterns of P. falciparum isolates