Abstract

CUESTA ASTROZ, YESID  and  SEGURA LATORRE, CESAR. Proteomics Methods Applied to Malaria: Plasmodium falciparum. Acta biol.Colomb. [online]. 2012, vol.17, n.3, pp.463-484. ISSN 0120-548X.

Malaria is a parasitic disease that has a high impact on public health in developing countries. The sequencing of the Plasmodium falciparum genome and the development of proteomics have enabled a breakthrough in understanding the biology of the parasite. Proteomics have allowed to characterize qualitatively and quantitatively the parasite s expression of proteins and has provided information on protein expression under conditions of estrés induced by antimalarials. Given the complexity of their life cycle, which takes place in the vertebrate host and mosquito vector. It has proven difficult to characterize the protein expression during each stage throughout the infection process in order to determine the proteome that mediates several metabolic, physiological and energetic processes. Two dimensional electrophoresis, liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry have been useful to assess the effects of antimalarials on parasite protein expression and to characterize the proteomic profile of differentt P. falciparum stages and organelles. The purpose of this review is to present state of the art tools and advances in proteomics applied to the study of malaria, and to present different experimental strategies used to study the parasite's proteome in order to show the advantages and disadvantages of each one.

Keywords : Antimalarials; bioinformatics; Plasmodium falciparum; proteomics.

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