HOME IMPROVEMENTS - MALARIA AND THE RED-BLOOD-CELL

In real-estate agent's terms, the red blood cell is a renovator's drea m. The mature human erythrocyte has no internal organelles, no protein synthesis machinery and no infrastructure for protein trafficking. Th e malaria parasite invades this empty shell and effectively converts t he erythrocyte bade into a fully functional eukaryotic cell. In this a rticle, Michael Foley and Leann Tilley examine the Plasmodium falcipar um proteins that interact with the membrane skeleton at different stag es of the infection and speculate an the roles of these proteins in th e remodelling process.