Yay, it's out in the world! More beautiful work on regulation of #malaria#parasite#metabolism from the ever-awesome @a_guggs! Needed a lot of patience to tease this new #Plasmodium drug-resistance trick.
With fellowship interview season coming up, time to look in the mirror and retake the Harvard Implicit Association Test. Takes <10 min, and IMHO should be required for all academic selection committees:
We’ve been collaborating w/Cindy Dowd at GWU (@GWtweets) making new antimalarials called MEPicides = cool prodrugs that target the DXR enzyme of the MEP pathway -- an essential biosynthetic pathway that humans and other mammals just don’t have/2
Turns out, malaria parasites aren’t the only bugs with the MEP pathway. We were totally inspired by Dan Beiting @hostmicrobe@pennvet – they found that staphylococci have either the mevalonate pathway (like people) or the MEP pathway (like parasites)/3
@CHOP_ID@CHOP_Research We consider most infections polymicrobial, even though only 6.7% actually grew >1 organism. Common bugs in kids with surgical cultures?
☑️S. aureus (MSSA and MRSA)
☑️Group A strep
☑️other resp/oral colonizers (Hflu/S. milleri)
/3
@CHOP_ID Calf exposure is such a big risk b/c calves are very likely to have #crypto. My favorite outbreak is this 2013 overturned cattle truck carrying 100s of calves. RR for diarrhea 3.0 in first responders who "carried calves":
Let me tell you about our newest preprint – a story of heat shock and prenylation in Plasmodium falciparum! biorxiv.org/content/10.110…
[Thread]
Most people with malaria get fever - how do malaria parasites survive that stress? /1
First of all, P. falciparum has a ton of heat shock proteins. In particular the DnaJ/Hsp40 family is very expanded – there are 49 Hsp40 family members in P. falciparum!! /2
We have previously found that one of these Hsp40s in Plasmodium is farnesylated – that is, modified by a 15-carbon isoprenyl group. We call it HSP40 and it is the canonical Hsp40 in malaria parasites. /3