Sudhir Kumar
Iowa State University, IA·Microbiology & Immunology
Malaria kills more than half a million people each year, mostly young children infected with Plasmodium falciparum. Drug resistance is spreading, and current vaccines work only moderately and do not stop the parasite's passage into mosquitoes.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
- Topics
malaria
Plasmodium falciparum
parasitology
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Determine how the male-specific kinase SRPK1 controls splicing of axoneme gene transcripts in Plasmodium falciparum, using proximity labeling to identify SRPK1-spliceosome complex proteins.
- Define the roles of Plasmodium microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) in assembling and stabilizing axonemes, the microtubule cores that power male gamete swimming.
- Investigate how axonemes assemble directly in the cytoplasm of activated male gametocytes as they rapidly form eight flagellated microgametes.
- Delineate the cell biology of PfHAP2p2, a third HAP2-like gamete fusion protein in P. falciparum, and test its ability to fuse cells.
- Test whether PfHAP2, PfHAP2p and PfHAP2p2 form a gamete fusion complex, identify additional components, and evaluate PfHAP2p2 as a transmission-blocking vaccine target.
More about the research
To move from human to mosquito, the parasite must reproduce sexually. Male and female sex cells form in the blood, are taken up by a mosquito and fuse in its gut. This step is a bottleneck in the life cycle and a promising target for transmission-blocking vaccines and drugs. The lab studies two parts of this step: how male sex cells build their swimming tails, and how male and female cells fuse.
Why it matters
Malaria spreads only if parasites reproduce in mosquitoes. Proteins needed for male gamete formation and gamete fusion could therefore become targets for transmission-blocking vaccines or drugs that stop parasites moving from people to mosquitoes. This could aid malaria elimination efforts protecting the billions of people at risk, especially young children.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Elizabeth Egan
Stanford University, CA·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine which precise steps of Plasmodium falciparum invasion of human red blood cells require the surface proteins CD44 and CD55, using live-cell imaging and advanced microscopy of CRISPR-edited cultured red blood cells.
Cristian Koepfli
University of Notre Dame, IN·Public Health & Epidemiology
Sequence more than 1,000 Plasmodium falciparum and more than 800 Plasmodium vivax samples collected since 2019 in the Ethiopian highlands to distinguish imported from locally transmitted infections and test whether imported parasites spread locally.
Jessica Lin
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether primaquine failures in a Thai Plasmodium vivax relapse trial were driven by a high burden of hypnozoites, dormant liver-stage parasites, using molecular inversion probe sequencing to detect circulating variants and gauge infection complexity.
The school
Iowa State University: 23 labs on PI Pages, $462M a year on research, 327 research doctorates a year.
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