Transfection of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum

In the past few years, methods have been developed which allow the introduc tion of exogenous DNA into the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum . This important technical advance known as parasite transfection, provides powerful new tools to study the function of Plasmodium proteins and their roles in biology and disease. Already it has allowed the analysis of promot er function and has been successfully applied to establish the role of part icular molecules and/or mutations in the biology of this parasite. This rev iew summarises the current state of the technology and how it has been appl ied to dissect the function of the P. falciparum genome. (C) 1999 Australia n Society for Parasitology Inc. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All righ ts reserved.