Project: Social networking and malaria parasite / Quorum sensing in malaria parasites
Day group
Quorum sensing is an altruistic phenomenon in which individual unicellular microorganisms collectively change their behaviour by responding to local population density through the release and receipt of diffusible small molecules known as quorum-sensing molecules. This altruistic phenomenon, to preserve the species rather than the individual, has been studied extensively in prokaryotic systems and recently there are reports in yeasts and protozoa. Quorum-sensing like behaviour by Plasmodium falciparum that regulates population size by programmed cell death is under investigation in our laboratory using biochemical and multi-omics analysis.
Project site: Bio21 Institute
Contact project supervisor for further
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Day group
8 vacancies
Professor Karen Day runs a multidisciplinary malaria research group that utilises molecular epidemiology to study the role that variation in human, parasite, and vector genomes plays in modulating transmission dynamics of Plasmodium spp. She is also interested in cell-to-cell communication in malaria parasites to alter population behaviour. She has a strong track record in interdisciplinary training of the next generation of infectious disease epidemiologists.
Day group Current Projects
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Malaria epidemiology and elimination in high transmission settings
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
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Genomic epidemiology and malaria surveillance
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
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Investigating antimalarial drug resistance in response to community interventions
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
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Surveillance and spread of artemisinin drug resistance and local Anopheles spp. adaptation of Plasmodium falciparum
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
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Bioinformatic investigation of diversity of the variant antigen genes of Plasmodium falciparum in low and high transmission
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science
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Insights into the evolution of variant antigen gene recombinants of Plasmodium falciparum in high transmission
PhD/MPhil
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Social networking and malaria parasite / Quorum sensing in malaria parasites
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science
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Malaria and the human genome / Identifying regions of the human genome selected by Plasmodium spp
PhD/MPhil, Master of Biomedical Science, Honours
Research degrees at the Doherty Institute are administered by the University of Melbourne.