Select a year 2001 2002 2003    Select a researcher Alan G. Barbour, M.D. William Bishai, M.D., Ph.D. Martin J. Blaser, M.D. John C. Boothroyd, Ph.D. Jon Clardy, Ph.D. Peter Cresswell, Ph.D. Roy Curtiss, III, Ph.D. Ronald W. Davis, Ph.D. Jack E. Dixon, Ph.D. Stanley Falkow, Ph.D. Gerald R. Fink, Ph.D. Richard A. Flavell, Ph.D. Lee Gehrke, Ph.D. Laurie H. Glimcher, M.D. Jeffrey I Gordon, M.D. Daniel L. Hartl, Ph.D. William R. Jacobs, Jr., Ph.D. Keith A. Joiner, M.D., co-PI Karla Kirkegaard, Ph.D. Roberto G. Kolter, Ph.D. W. Ian Lipkin, M.D. Richard M. Locksley, M.D. Carl Nathan, M.D. Peter Palese, Ph.D. Pradipsinh K. Rathod, Ph.D. David A. Relman, M.D. Charles M. Rice, Ph.D. Alexander Rich, M.D. Lee W. Riley, M.D. David S. Roos, Ph.D. Abigail A. Salyers, Ph.D. Gary K. Schoolnik, M.D. Iwona Stroynowski, Ph.D. Ronald P. Taylor, Ph.D. Elisabetta Ullu, Ph.D. John Waitumbi, D.V.M., Ph.D Select a project A Gnotobiotic Zebrafish Model for Analyzing Symbiotic Host...Antiviral Effects of Interferon-Inducible Cytosolic ProteinsArming the Immune System against Pathogens with Selective ...Bacterial Pathogen Families that Function in Both the Anim...Cellular Genes and Viruses: Who Wins The War?Conditional Targeted Deletions in Plasmodium falciparum...Designing and Mining Pathogen Genome Databases: The Apicop...Development of Genetic Systems for Genetically Intractable...Development of New Genetic Tools to Identify Nutrient Upta...Ecological Influences on Pathogen Genome EvolutionEvolution of Virulence in Eukaryotic PathogensExploiting an Evolutionary Omission in Pathogenic RNA Viru...Exploring Novel Pathways of Immune Defenses Against Orally...Genomic Approach to Improved Immunogenicity of M. tuber...Genomic tools to characterize hypermutating Plasmodium fal...Investigation of Mechanisms Leading to Anemia at Low Paras...Molecular definition of the bacterial population of human ...Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Latency and Reactivation Tuberc...New Antibiotics from Environmental DNAOptimizing Immunity to Complex Pathogens In VivoPandora's Box ProjectProviding an Economic Benefit to Using a Vaccine to Enhanc...Resistance Gene Flow in the Human Colonic MicrofloraRole of Nucleotide Binding Domain-Leucine Rich Repeat Prot...Sexually Transmitted Disease Agents in the “Healthy” Human...Systematic Analysis of Positive-strand RNA Viral Transmiss...The Human Intestinal Microbiome: Community Analysis, Host ...The Molecular Ecology of Vibrio cholerae in the Gangetic D...The Natural History of Typhoid Infection in VietnamThe Role of Quorum Sensing in Fungal DiseaseTowards Broad-spectrum Antivirals: Functional Screens for ...Transmission Blocking Vaccines for TuberculosisTransmission-blocking Vaccines Against Arthropod VectorsViral Pathogenic Mechanisms Involving Z-DNA Binding Proteins Select an institution Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University Columbia University Harvard Medical School Harvard School of Public Health Harvard University Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mount Sinai School of Medicine New York University School of Medicine Rockefeller University Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford University School of Medicine, VA Palo Alto Health Care System University of California - Berkeley University of California - Irvine University of California - San Diego University of California - San Francisco University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign University of Pennsylvania University of Texas Southwest Medical Center University of Virginia University of Washington Washington University Washington University School of Medicine Weill Medical College of Cornell University Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research Yale University School of Medicine

	Keith A. Joiner, M.D., co-PI Yale University School of Medicine
	Elisabetta Ullu, Ph.D. Yale University School of Medicine

The rapid spreading of Plasmodium falciparum strains that are resistant to current antimalarial therapy has focused the attention of the research community on the urgent need to identify new therapeutic targets, leading to novel therapies. Our laboratories have a long-standing commitment to study nutrient acquisition in Toxoplasma gondii (Keith Joiner), a human pathogen evolutionarily closely related to the malaria parasite, and to develop genetic tools for the human parasite Trypanosoma brucei (Elisabetta Ullu). The objective of our plan is to develop new genetic tools for manipulating the malaria parasite, and use these tools in analysis of nutrient acquisition pathways in P. falciparum-infected erythrocytes. To achieve this goal we will work towards three main objectives. First, we will establish whether parasite genes can be down regulated via gene-specific double-stranded RNA. This is a new paradigm in eukaryotic biology, referred to as RNA interference, which has revolutionized genome-wide analysis of gene function in particular for organisms, such as the malaria parasite, for which the genome sequence is known. Second, we will engineer a bacterial-derived transposon to mutagenize and at the same time tag genes of interest. Thirdly, we will establish methods for identifying and enriching for parasites that are deficient in nutrient uptake. Parasites will be exposed to a variety of exogenous fluorescent markers to specifically label parasite uptake pathways and sorted using FACS. Tracers will be chosen to provide functional data on specific nutrient acquisition pathways, and thus provide invaluable knowledge on the biology of the parasite.

Contact Dr. Joiner.

Contact Dr. Ullu.