Scientists from the school of life sciences have helped decode the malaria genome as part of international efforts to control the disease through the development of better drugs, vaccines and diagnostics.
The malaria parasite genome sequencing project was coordinated by The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hixton, Cambridge and has taken the international consortium 6 years to complete, at a cost of $15 million dollars.
As part of the international consortium Professor Alan Fairlamb and Dr David Martin, played a pivotal role in the project, analysing the genetic information and constructing metabolic pathways for the discovery of new drug targets.
Professor Fairlamb said: "The breaking of this code is an extremely exciting development as we now have the complete genomes for the malaria parasite and the mosquito carrier to assist efforts in controlling this terrible disease.
The malaria genome encodes about 5,000 proteins, of which scientists know the function of only a fraction. Solving the functional roles of these unknowns will be a considerable challenge, especially as they may contain significant candidates for future drug and vaccine development.
The beauty of being able to construct metabolic pathways in the malaria parasite is that we can apply this information immediately in the discovery of new drugs against malaria".