People to parasites: global and molecular approaches to combat human malaria

Malaria is a debilitating and often fatal disease caused by infection with Plasmodium parasites. In addition to parasites infecting billions of people annually, malaria poses a significant social and economic burden on some of the most impoverished regions of the world. There are currently no effective vaccines and drug resistance has emerged to all clinically available drugs for malaria treatment. The World Health Organizations (WHO) objective is to eliminate malaria as a global health burden by 2030. There are two distinctive, but vital areas of research needed to achieve the WHOs goal: discovery of new diagnostics and identification of drug targets. This dissertation covers three areas of research that touch on each of those needs. The first manuscript is the field assessment of a malaria molecular diagnostic compared to standard microscopy in Roraima, Brazil. The second is a methods paper on the development of molecular tools to study the parasite. The third manuscript covers my main thesis work in which I utilized molecular tools to investigate an ER chaperone, PfGRP170, during P. falciparum asexual development. Overall, this thesis provides research that will assist the malaria community in our fight against this disease.