Plasmodium and CRISPR videos Flashcards
- What are the two obligate hosts of Plasmodium?
Mosquitos and humans
- Why do mosquitoes seek out human blood? Do male or female mosquitos bite humans?
Female mosquitos seek out human blood because they are pregnant
- How does Plasmodium enter the human body from the mosquito? What is the first site of infection?
When the mosquito bites the human, she injects her saliva to stop the blood from clotting, and her saliva also carries the Malaria parasite. The first site of infection is the liver
- What does Plasmodium parasite do once inside the human liver cell? What are the consequences of this?
It undergoes hundreds of nuclear divisions, copying its DNA. An infected liver cell will create thousands of new parasites
- After the liver cells dies and releases the merozoites (Plasmodium parasite) what is the secondary target in the human body?
RBCs
- What are the benefits of entering the red blood cell (RBC) of humans from the parasite’s perspective?
Once inside the RBC, it can hide from the body’s immune system
- What happens to the infected RBC?
The parasite eats the contents of the RBC and also creates more RBC inside of it. It becomes sticky and hangs on to vessel walls. The infected cell eventually bursts, spreading more parasites through the blood stream
- What are the symptoms of malaria? How do they relate to the way Plasmodium infects its human host?
Fever, loss of blood, convulsions, brain damage and coma
- What percent of people contract malaria? What demographic is most at risk (have the highest mortality rates)?
10% of people on earth will be infected with malaria. Most people who die from the disease are pregnant women and children under the age of 5
What is CRISPR?
An immunity system in bacteria, that allows biologists to insert into organisms. When the organism reproduces, it spreads the altered genes to future generations
How does CRISPR gene drive work?
A CRISPR gene drive inserted on one chromosome locates a gene sequence on the chromosome next to it. Like a pair of scissors, it “cuts” that sequence and inserts a copy of the pair of “scissors” in the DNA wound. The organism then has two copies of the CRISPR driving gene, one on each of its two chromosomes, so that gene is present in all the ova or sperm that the organism produces. When that organism mates with an individual in which the CRISPR gene is absent, all offspring initially have one copy of the CRISPR gene and one of the wild-type gene that the species had before the CRISPR system was introduced. Then CRISPR goes to work in those offspring, changing them from having just one copy of CRISPR to having two.
