Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine

The single cell transcriptional signature of sexual commitment in the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum

<ns5:p> Background Malaria remains a global health challenge, with most fatal cases caused by <ns5:italic>Plasmodium falciparum</ns5:italic> in sub-Saharan Africa. A critical bottleneck in the <ns5:italic>Plasmodium</ns5:italic> life cycle is the transmission from human to mosqui...

Characterising recent antimalarial resistance in West Africa: Insights from amplicon sequencing of 17,384 Plasmodium falciparum infection samples

<ns5:p> Background <ns5:italic>Plasmodium falciparum</ns5:italic> ( <ns5:italic>P. falciparum</ns5:italic> ) infection remains a significant public health threat in West Africa, where chemoprevention and first-line therapies are key interventions against malaria. However, the dev...

The Plasmodium heme detoxification protein functions in mitochondrial protein synthesis

Abstract Malaria blood-stage parasites digest ~80% of host cell hemoglobin within a degradative vacuole, releasing heme that is detoxified by sequestration into hemozoin crystals. Although essential for survival and a validated drug target, the mechanisms of heme biomineralizatio...

Not all West Nile virus lineages behave alike: dose-response differences between lineages 1 and 2

Abstract The globally distributed arbovirus West Nile virus (WNV) is expanding across Europe, with rising numbers of human cases and an increasingly broad geographic distribution. Transmitted primarily by Culex mosquitoes, WNV lineages 1 and 2 are pathogenic to humans, yet their...