Scientists map genomes of 2 malaria parasites

WASHINGTON -- Scientists have mapped the genomes of the parasite that causes most cases of malaria outside Africa and a monkey parasite that is emerging as an important cause of malaria in people in Southeast Asia.

This information should help guide efforts to develop new drugs and vaccines to fight the mosquito-borne disease, two teams of researchers wrote in the journal Nature yesterday.

"It's going to be a very powerful tool," said Jane Carlton of New York University's Langone Medical Center.

A team led by Carlton worked out the complete genetic sequence of the parasite Plasmodium vivax, which causes malaria in Latin American and Asian countries including India, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Melanesia, and the Korean peninsula.

It accounts for up to 40 percent of malaria globally, with an estimated 2.6 billion people threatened by the parasite.

Although the malaria it causes is only occasionally fatal, it triggers severe symptoms, such as repeated episodes of high fever followed by headache, chills and profuse sweating, vomiting, diarrhea and enlargement of the spleen.

A team led by Arnab Pain of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Britain deciphered the full genetic sequence of the monkey parasite Plasmodium knowlesi.

This parasite is rapidly establishing itself in Southeast Asia, Pain said.