Cellular and molecular aspects of clag 9

clag 9 的细胞和分子方面

• 批准号: nhmrc : 137204
• 负责人: A/Pr Donald Gardiner
• 金额: $ 14.1万
• 依托单位: Queensland Institute of Medical Research
• 依托单位国家: 澳大利亚
• 项目类别: NHMRC Project Grants
• 财政年份: 2001
• 资助国家: 澳大利亚
• 起止时间: 2001-01-01 至 2003-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://researchdata.edu.au/cellular-molecular-aspects-clag-9/82239
• 关键词: Cellular; molecular; aspects; clag

Malaria is a very important disease worldwide, causing hundreds of millions of cases and about two million deaths per year. Severe malaria including cerebral malaria is a major cause of death. It is caused by red blood cells which contain malaria parasites sticking to the lining of microscopic veins and clogging them; what happens after this is complex. The process of sticking is called cytoadherence. We have discovered a gene which is important in this process of sticking. We have called it by the acronym clag, for cytoadherence-linked asexual gene; most Australians know of Clag as a glue. Our evidence for this has been accepted for publication by the prestigious USA journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. Recent work overseas aimed at determining the entire DNA sequence of the malaria parasite has shown that clag is not alone; there are at least 9 slightly different clag genes in the malaria parasite. What do the others do? We propose two possibilities. The first is that all of them act in cytoadherence but that different clags enable the parasitised cells to stick to different things on the lining of veins. The second is that they enable the parasitised cells, or perhaps the parasites alone, to stick to other things at different stages of the complex life cycle of the parasite. The experiments that we propose should show whether either of these proposals is true.

疟疾是世界范围内一种非常重要的疾病，每年造成数亿病例和约200万人死亡。包括脑型疟疾在内的严重疟疾是死亡的主要原因。它是由含有疟原虫的红细胞粘附在微小的静脉内壁上并堵塞它们引起的;之后发生的事情很复杂。粘附的过程称为细胞粘附。我们已经发现了一个基因，它在这个粘附过程中很重要。我们把它叫做clag，意思是细胞粘附相关的无性基因;大多数澳大利亚人都知道Clag是一种胶水。我们对此的证据已被美国著名期刊《美国国家科学院院刊》接受发表。最近，国外对疟原虫DNA序列的研究表明，clag基因并不是唯一的，至少有9个不同的clag基因。其他人怎么办？我们提出两种可能性。第一，它们都在细胞粘附中起作用，但不同的粘附使寄生细胞能够粘附在静脉内膜上的不同东西上。第二，它们使被寄生的细胞，或者可能是寄生虫，在寄生虫复杂的生命周期的不同阶段粘附到其他东西上。我们提出的实验应该表明这两种说法是否正确。