Alumni
This person is a member of Sanger Institute Alumni.
I was at Sanger from my PhD from October 2020 to December 2024 followed by a transitional postdoc until March 2026.
The WHO has set the goal to reduce P.falciparum malaria mortality, currently standing at around 0.5 million, by 90% in 2030. To achieve this, the transmission stage of the malaria lifecycle has been earmarked as a target due to the drastic reduction in parasite numbers at this stage.
Embedded within a collaborative project between the Lawniczak group at Sanger and the Djimde group in MRTC, Mali, my PhD set out to use scRNAseq to uncover the biology of circulating malaria parasites with a focus on the transmissive stages. We observed sexually-committed parasites i.e. those that at the initial step of forming transmissive stages and characterised the biology unique to natural infections for this process. We also identified novel circulating transmissive stages which we hypothesised to be older and likely dormant forms. Furthermore, we uncovered many genotypes circulating within the study population with gene expression differences indicative of evolution to allow adaptation to diverse host and environmental conditions. We provided the dataset to the malaria community via the MCA website where they can browse expression of their gene of interest in natural infections. Our findings and datasets can be used to inform transmission-blocking interventions.