Title |
Development of a genetic tool for functional screening of anti-malarial bioactive extracts in metagenomic libraries
|
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Published in |
Malaria Journal, June 2015
|
DOI | 10.1186/s12936-015-0748-6 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Alvaro Mongui, Francy J. Pérez-Llanos, Marcio M. Yamamoto, Marcela Lozano, Maria M. Zambrano, Patricia Del Portillo, Carmen Fernández-Becerra, Silvia Restrepo, Hernando A. Del Portillo, Howard Junca |
Abstract |
The chemical treatment of Plasmodium falciparum for human infections is losing efficacy each year due to the rise of resistance. One possible strategy to find novel anti-malarial drugs is to access the largest reservoir of genomic biodiversity source on earth present in metagenomes of environmental microbial communities. A bioluminescent P. falciparum parasite was used to quickly detect shifts in viability of microcultures grown in 96-well plates. A synthetic gene encoding the Dermaseptin 4 peptide was designed and cloned under tight transcriptional control in a large metagenomic insert context (30 kb) to serve as proof-of-principle for the screening platform. Decrease in parasite viability consistently correlated with bioluminescence emitted from parasite microcultures, after their exposure to bacterial extracts containing a plasmid or fosmid engineered to encode the Dermaseptin 4 anti-malarial peptide. Here, a new technical platform to access the anti-malarial potential in microbial environmental metagenomes has been developed. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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United Kingdom | 1 | 17% |
Colombia | 1 | 17% |
Unknown | 4 | 67% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
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Members of the public | 4 | 67% |
Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 1 | 17% |
Scientists | 1 | 17% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
United Kingdom | 1 | 2% |
United States | 1 | 2% |
Unknown | 46 | 96% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Student > Master | 9 | 19% |
Researcher | 8 | 17% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 7 | 15% |
Student > Doctoral Student | 5 | 10% |
Student > Bachelor | 3 | 6% |
Other | 8 | 17% |
Unknown | 8 | 17% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 16 | 33% |
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 6 | 13% |
Medicine and Dentistry | 4 | 8% |
Environmental Science | 2 | 4% |
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science | 2 | 4% |
Other | 7 | 15% |
Unknown | 11 | 23% |