Transgenic Plasmodium knowlesi: relieving a bottleneck in malaria research?

Plasmodium knowlesi is a primate malaria parasite that is phylogenetically close to the major human parasite Plasmodium vivax. P. knowlesi causes life-threatening disease in humans, infects a wide range of non-human primates and is one of few malaria parasites amenable to cyclical in vitro propagation. A robust in vivo and in vitro genetic manipulation system has been developed for this parasite, enabling in vitro-in vivo shuttling of transgenes, which (together with recent characterization of its genome and that of its macaque experimental host) offers unique opportunities to gain insight in molecular function and parasite-host interactions.