Malaria Parasite’s Brutal Blood Cell Invasion Finally Caught on Video [Video]

The eerie video you’re about to monitor captures the moment when a malaria parasite invades a human red blood cell- it is the first time that such an event has been caught in moving pictures.

The Plasmodium parasite accountable for malaria is transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes, and is understood to kill almost 1 million people worldwide every year.

Jake Baum at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, and associates used transmission electron microscopy and 3D immuno-fluorescence microscopy to record a sequence of still images through the 30-second-long invasion, and combined them into a movie.

To boost their probabilities of catching a Plasmodium parasite within the act of attacking a red blood cell the team controlled the process using two drugs. The first – heparin – prevents parasites entering a new red blood cell, while the second – E64 – prevents their exit. Carefully timing the treatments meant ” we knew we were going to get huge number of invasion events” , says Baum.

The parasites produce a protein called the tight junction marker and use it to glue to and drill into red blood cells, says Baum. ” Firstly of invasion it’s a dot, as the parasite enters the cell it becomes an attractive circle, and then the marker is behind the parasite.”

The movie shows that invasion isn’t really a well-ordered process, as we had thought, says Baum. ” Initial attachment using the tight junction marker is the principle switch, and then the parasite does everything immediately.” Simultaneously, it releases a vacuole to live in and switches on a motor complex allowing it to go throughout the cell.

Kiaran Kirk at the Australian National University in Canberra says the ” clever cell preparation and stunning microscopy” is a ” tour de force” .

The movie can have implications for the treatment of malaria too. Leann Tilley of l. a. Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, says the consequences confirm that interfering with the master switch would stop the parasites from entering red blood cells and ” thereby stop disease” .

Journal reference: Cell Host & Microbe, DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2010.12.003

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