Resistance mapping in malaria

摘要

Although malaria still causes more than one million deaths annually, the number of reported cases of the disease has been decreasing in recent years1'2. This decrease may be partly attributable to improved surveillance and control of mosquitoes, the malaria parasite's vector. But many experts feel that it is mainly a result of the availability and effectiveness of medicines called artemisinin-based combination therapies. Because this is the only class of anti-malarial therapy that can effectively eliminate multi-drug-resistant malaria infections, the discovery of artemisinin resistance in parasites in western Cambodia3 has been viewed as a potential disaster by the international malaria community, and has sparked intensive effort to identify the genes conferring the resistance. Writing in Nature Genetics, Miotto et al.4 use whole-genome sequencing to investigate 825 samples of Plasmodiumfalciparum- a common human malaria parasite - from southeast Asia and West Africa in an attempt to reveal the molecular basis and origin of artemisinin resistance.