Malaria parasite volumes determined using microscopy

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The Snoep Lab’s core research efforts are in Computational Systems Biology; a combined experimental, modeling and theoretical approach to quantitatively understand the functional behavior of Biological Systems resulting from the characteristics of their components. Our main focus is on metabolism, of human pathogens such as Plasmodium falciparum, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but also of breast cancer cell lines, and on modelling disease states such as glucose homeostatis in type 2 diabetes, and ...

Hypoglycaemia and lactic acidosis are key diagnostics for poor chances of survival in malaria patients. In this project we aim to test to what extent the metabolic activity of Plasmodium falciparum contributes to a changed glucose metabolism in malaria patients. The approach is to start with detailed bottom up models for the parasite and then merge these with more coarse grained models at the whole body level.

The investigation entails the construction and validation of a detailed mathematical model for glycolysis erythrocytes infected with the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in the blood stage form.

Determinations of parasite volumes in a well-synchronised, infected culture treated with a cytosolic stain, using fluorescence microscopy. Diameters used to calculate parasite volume, assuming a spherical parasite cell.