Projects
Recent achievements We have continued to develop a rodent model (Plasmodium chabaudi) of malaria, continuing the work of Profs David Walliker and Richard Carter in Edinburgh.
Numbers in square brackets [eg] refer to publications below Our achievements (some of which have involved a strong and developing collaboration with scientists in Lisbon and other laboratories) include
- Selection of drug resistant mutants of P. chabaudi [1, 10]
- Identification and investigation of genetic loci underlying drug resistance [6, 8, 9, 10]
- Development of molecular markers for different strains of rodent malaria parasites, development of genetic linkage map, physical mapping of markers in malaria genome [4, 11]
- Development of quantitative markers (AFLP, proportional sequencing and pyrosequencing) to estimate the proportions of alleles in the uncloned progeny of genetic crosses [2, 7]
- Development of Linkage Group Selection (LGS) – a novel strategy for mapping genetic loci underlying selectable phenotypes such as drug resistance [5, 6]
- Characterisation of the fitness costs of mutations underlying drug resistance [3] Present projects We are currently investigating the genetic basis of Artemisinin resistance in P. chabaudi in collaboration with Pedro Cravo’s laboratory in Lisbon We are also investigating the fitness costs of drug resistance markers in P. chabaudi