MINIREVIEW SERIES
Malaria
)
the global disease
Renu Tuteja
Malaria Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India
Malaria is a disease of global concern. Historically,
malaria has killed more people than any other infec-
tious disease and still accounts for massive levels of
mortality and morbidity in over 100 countries of the
world. In Africa and some other underdeveloped coun-
tries mortality remains high because there is limited
access to treatment in villages. Malaria parasites
spread by successively infecting two types of hosts:
humans and female Anopheles mosquitoes. Four
species of malaria parasite can infect humans under
natural conditions: Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmo-
dium vivax, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium mala-
riae. The first two cause the most infections
worldwide. In humans, the parasites grow and multiply
first in the liver cells and then in the erythrocytes.
Blood-stage parasites are responsible for causing the
symptoms of malaria, and the disease is diagnosed by
its symptoms and the microscopic examination of
blood. Malaria is completely curable but the emer-
gence of drug-resistance in P. falciparum is a major
obstacle to the control of the disease. Insecticide resis-
tance in disease-transmitting mosquitoes makes it vital
to understand the molecular background of the patho-
genesis of malaria in order to facilitate the develop-
ment of novel approaches to combat the disease.

folates, chloroquine and its relatives, and the powerful
new artemisinin derivatives.
The final minireview provides strategies towards the
development of a novel drug target against this para-
site. Helicases are important molecular motor proteins,
which couple the hydrolysis of nucleic acid triphosphate
to nucleic acid unwinding. These enzymes are required
for all nucleic acid transactions in the malaria parasite
and can therefore serve as attractive drug targets.
Renu Tuteja is currently Staff Research Scientist at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotech-
nology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India. After postdoctoral research at NIH (Bethesda, MD) and UCLA (Los Angeles,
CA) she held a faculty position at ICGEB (Trieste, Italy). She has carried out pioneering work on helicases from dif-
ferent systems, including malarial parasites. Recently, she reported the isolation, from the malaria parasite, of a
signal peptidase and a novel bipolar, schizont-stage-specific helicase regulated by phosphorylation. Her current
research interests are the characterization of important enzymes of P. falciparum and their role in parasite biology.
doi: 10.1111/j.1742-4658.2007.05996.x
FEBS Journal 274 (2007) 4669 ª 2007 The Author Journal compilation ª 2007 FEBS 4669