Progress in the study of the origin of the malaria parasite.

The ceplassm is not as well known as its deadly close relative, Plasmodium falciparum, which dominates sub-Saharan Africa.
but this "other malaria", which is rare in Africa, affects some 75 million people a year in Asia and the Americas.
now, new genetic evidence reveals how the parasites have made it to the stage of history, where they infected apes and humans in Africa and then left the continent for other parts of the continent in a ride-hailing car from early human migrations.
Until recently, scientists believed that the chalongmalarial worm originated in Macaques in Asia, spread to humans there, and then reached Europe and the Americas.
but in 2010, scientists began to find evidence of the mesomalarial in chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos in Africa.
this shows the African origin of the parasite.
, however, there is little genetic evidence to support this theory, and much of the data from ape parasites is derived from incomplete genetic sequences found in non-human primate feces.
now, researchers have successfully sequenced the entire genome of parasites infected with six chimpanzees and one gorilla. Blood samples from protected areas in Cameroon and Gabon,
, and a wild chimpanzee living in Ivory Coast.
the gorilla's blood samples came from a piece of "jungle meat" collected in Cameroon. The new study of the parasite genome shows that the diversity of ape parasites far exceeds those that infect humans,
scientists report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. David Conway, a malaria expert at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who was not involved in the study
, said the study adds weight to the idea that the malaria parasite had infected apes and humans in Africa and had followed humans to the continents of Asia and Europe and the Americas.
Conway noted that malaria parasites spread early in different parts of the world with modern humans, "and there may be only a few primitive strains that later evolved into the mesomalarial parasite in today's human strains." Richard Culleton, a malaria expert at Nagasaki University in Japan, agrees
.
he says the new data strongly suggest that the human population began to gain immunity shortly after the "escape from Africa" of the modern human malaria parasite.
Today, infections caused by the cesison are rare in Africa, where most people lack the proteins that parasites use to enter red blood cells.
led the study with Paul Sharp, an infectious disease geneticist at the University of Edinburgh, and Beatrice Hahn, an infectious disease specialist at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Sharp says this view is further supported by the idea that the malaria parasitefound in African apes and humans appears to be closely linked to parasites elsewhere. "We're looking for evidence that ape parasites are somehow completely different,"
.
, " sharp said. "Are they differentiated to the point where they indicate that these malaria parasites are independent species?" But we found no indication that they were independent.
" Sharp noted that this is consistent with occasional reports that tourists traveling in Africa have been infected with the cesison after returning home, most likely from a mosquito that has bitten an infected ape.
this means that even if the parasite is eliminated in Asia and the Americas, it can hitchhike from Africa at any time and trigger new outbreaks in other parts of the world. "This could mean that we will never be able to eradicate the cesisan emigratist unless we try to eliminate them in the chimpanzee and gorilla populations,"
.
," Culleton said.
malaria is caused by a parasite called the malaria parasite, which is transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito.
According to the World Health Organization, there are about 200 million malaria cases and about 600,000 deaths worldwide each year, most of them in Africa.
.