ABSTRACT Malaria is considered by many to be the most important infectious diseases a of humans in the world. Since the dawn of civilization, malaria has left it detrimental fingerprints all over history. The World Health Organization reports an estimated 300 million people infected with the protozoan parasite worldwide and a mortality rate that claims more than one million victims annually. Of the four species known to infect huinans with malaria, Plasmodium falciparum is by far the most pathogenic and efforts to inhibit its ~idespread epidemiology have been minimal. Only a handful of antimalarials are currently available to combat the disease and even they are loosing efficacy due to the increased prevalence of drug resistance. Therefore, it is important to discover new modes of treatment. Inhibitors of protein prenylation have been identified by our laboratory to have the potential to be a new class of antimalarials. Protein prenylation is a relatively new research interest that studies the functional significance of famesyl (C15) and geranylgeranyl (C20) posttranslational modifications in a variety of cellular regulatory processes. These prosthetic groups are thought to be absolutely essential for the activity and cellular localization of prenylated proteins. Inhibitors of protein prenylation act through perturbation of the subcellular localization of these important proteins. In an effort to understand the mechanism of action of prenyl transferase inhibitors, it is important to characterize malarial prenylated proteins. This thesis initiated studies in characterizing putative prenylated proteins and has focused on three P.falciparum proteins, PfPTP, PtRab6, and PfDnaJ. Attempts have been made to clone and over-express recombinant proteins and generate antibodies for functional analysis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ucf.edu/oai:stars.library.ucf.edu:honorstheses1990-2015-1387 |
| Date | 01 January 2004 |
| Creators | Love, Timothy |
| Publisher | STARS |
| Source Sets | University of Central Florida |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | HIM 1990-2015 |
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