BR50 Life Sciences Seminar

We would like to invite you to the next seminar from Dr. Silvia Portugal  (Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology) will give a talk about her research on “Survival strategies of malaria parasites in the dry season”:

Malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum leads to almost half a million deaths of children under the age of five every year, when the mosquito vector is prevalent. On the other hand, during the dry season when mosquito vectors are absent, clinically silent P. falciparum can persist in children for months without causing symptoms, constituting the reservoir that bridges two wet seasons and allows transmission to resume yearly. I will discuss how, during the dry season, P. falciparum limits parasite growth to levels that allow host survival and avoid immune responses that could potentially cause complete parasite clearance, ensuring parasite survival and transmission upon the return of the mosquito vectors as the rainy season resumes