Plasmodium yoelii

Plasmodium yoelii is a parasite of the genus Plasmodium subgenus Vinckeia.

Like all Plasmodium species P. yoelii has both vertebrate and insect hosts. The vertebrate hosts for this parasite are mammals.

Description

This species was described in 1968 by Landau, Michel and Adam.

Geographical occurrence

This species occurs in Africa.

Vectors

The natural vectors of this species are not currently known. One possible is the female Anopheles mosquito which serves as a vector for Plasmodium vivax.

Clinical features and host pathology

This species infects Thamnomys rutilans.

Notes

Three subspecies are recognised: P. yoelii killicki, P. yoelii nigeriensis and P. yoelii yoelli.

Its most notable feature is that it is used in the laboratory to infect mice, as a model of human malaria, particularly with respect to the immune response.

It is advantageous to have a whole-animal model of malaria because often it is difficult to know which factors to study in vitro, particularly in a complex system like the immune system. Moreover, for many experiments it is not ethical or practical to use humans.

One of the special things about this particular model is that it has two strains with vastly different pathogenicity. These are generally referred to as the "lethal" and "non-lethal" strains of the species. Comparison of these two strains can be used to deduce which factors may contribute to more serious malaria infections in humans.

References

Further reading

• Charoenvit, Yupin; Leef, Mary; Yuan, Leo; Sedegah, Martha; Beaudoin, Richard (March 1987). "Characterization of Plasmodium yoelii Monoclonal Antibodies Directed Against Stage-specific Sporozoite Antigens". Infection and Immunity. 55 (1987): 604–608. PMC 260381. PMID 2434426.
• Keitany, Gladys J.; Sack, Brandon; Smithers, Hannah; Chen, Lin; Jang, Ihn K.; Sebastian, Leslie (December 2012). "Immunization of Mice with Live-Attenuated Late Liver Stage-Arresting Plasmodium yoelii Parasites Generates Protective Antibody Responses to Preerythrocytic Stages of Malaria". Infection and Immunity. 82 (12): 5143–5153. doi:10.1128/IAI.02320-14. PMC 4249261. PMID 25267837.
• White, Chelsi E.; Villarino, Nicolas F.; Sloan, Sarah S.; Ganusov, Vitaly V.; Schmidt, Nathan W. (10 December 2014). "Plasmodium Suppresses Expansion of T Cell Responses to Heterologous Infections". The Journal of Immunology. 194 (2): 697–708. doi:10.4049/jimmunol.1401745. PMC 4282975.
• Valeelat O., Okeola; Oluwatosin A., Adaramoye; Chiaka M., Nneji (January 2011). "Antimalarial and antioxidant activities of methanolic extract of Nigella sativa seeds (black cumin) in mice infected with Plasmodium yoelli nigeriensis". PARASITOLOGY RESEARCH. 108 (6): 1507–1512. doi:10.1007/s00436-010-2204-4. PMID 21153838.
• Harupa, Anke; Sack, Brandon; Lashmanan, Viswanathan. "SSP3 Is a Novel Plasmodium yoelii Sporozoite Surface Protein with a Role in Gliding Motility". Infection and Immunity. 82 (11): 4643–4653. doi:10.1128/IAI.01800-14. PMC 4249349. PMID 25156733.
• Kaushansky, Alexis; Austin, Laura S.; Mikolajczak, Sebastian A.; Fang, Y. Lo; Miller, Jessica A.; Douglass, Alyse N.; Arang, Nadia; Vaughan, Ashley M.; Gardner, Malcolm J.; Kappe, Stefan H. I. (January 2015). "Susceptibility to Plasmodium yoelii Preerythrocytic Infection in BALB/c Substrains Is Determined at the Point of Hepatocyte Invasion". Infection and Immunity. 83 (1): 39–47. doi:10.1128/IAI.02230-14. PMC 4288894. PMID 25312960.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Plasmodium yoelii.

Information about the genome and genes of P. yoelii

• www.genedb.org/Homepage/PyoeliiYM