Development of conditional knock-out system for the human parasite Plasmodium falciparum

Abstract

Malaria is a global burden with half of the worlds population at risk. The main causative agent of Malaria in humans is Plasmodium falciparum. The FKBP destabilization domain was recently found to be able to regulate protein expression in Plasmodium falciparum. The aim of my project was to re-establish the use of the FKBP destabilization domain locally. I was able to successfully re-establish functionality of the FKBP destabilizing domain through parasite transfection. Using ligation, I also designed plasmid constructs containing the FKBP domain for episomal transfections and integration into the parasite genome. These plasmids can be easily modified using well-established molecular techniques to insert genes of interest for expression studies or to make knockdown parasites with strongly inhibited expression of both essential and non-essential genes. This provides researchers working on Plasmodium a new tool to use for investigating the effects of protein knockouts on parasites.