For more than thirty years, the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame has had an internationally recognized program of research and teaching in parasitology and vector biology. The Program has received almost uninterrupted support over this period from the National Institutes of Health training grants. Since the mid-1960s, this program has been the repository of the World Health Organization's reference collection of various mutations and geographic strains of the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti . More recently, the collection has been expanded to include the Asian Tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus , and the important African malaria vector Anopheles gambiae . Biology of the Blood Stage of the Parasite Prof. John Adams of the Department of Biological Sciences and the members of his laboratory are particularly interested in the relationship between the biology of the malaria parasite and disease in the human host.
Malaria is caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium .
Disease is due to repeated cycles of the parasite's growth in and destruction of the host's red blood cells or erythrocytes. Blood stage development of malaria parasites is initiated when the motile merozoite stage invades susceptible erythrocytes. Because the merozoite adhesion molecules that mediate invasion are exposed during invasion, these molecules are important candidates for malaria vaccines. The merozoite stages of Plasmodium vivax , one of the two important species of human malaria parasites, and P. knowlesi , a related parasite of macaque monkeys, require interaction with an erythrocyte surface protein called the Duffy blood group antigen. In human populations that lack this antigen, such as most people in sub-Saharan Africa, the parasite cannot infect people.