Research Projects

P. vivax, the most common agent of human Malaria in Asia specifically invades immature red blood cells known as reticulocytes. We hypothesize that there exists unknown primary invasion receptor(s) specifically expressed on the reticulocyte that are minimally found on normocytes such as sMIM1 may be involved in P. vivax invasion of reticulocytes. Furthermore, we anticipate that such reticulocyte surface receptors will specifically interact with one of the PvRBPs (present on plasmodium merozoites), to form a receptor ligand complex essential to the invasion of P. vivax into erythrocytes. On the basis of earlier findings and preliminary Pv invasion assay data, we hypothesize that the primary ligand-receptor interaction used by Pv for reticulocyte recognition and invasion is a member of the pvRBP family binding to sMIM1, which will be tested in this project.