Homework
Weekly homework submissions:
Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices
Assignment 1 Background Malaria is a dangerous disease that affects hundred of millions of people worldwide. Each year, there are almost 300 million cases, with 600,000 deaths, 95% of which are disproportionately in Africa. The only known cure for malaria for the longest time was quinine, a drug that was used to treat the disease in the 19th century. In the 1970s, Tu Youyou discovered artemisinin, a compound that is more effective in eradicating malaria than quinine. A few years later, she was able to synthesize it on a much larger scale using a modified yeast cell.
Part 1: Benchling & In-silico Gel Art placeholder text Part 3: DNA Design Challenge 3.1: Choose your protein I decided to pick the Plasmodium falciparum erythrocyte membrane protein 1 (PfEMP1). This is a large family of functionally different proteins that are created from a group of about 60 genes that the Plasmodium falciparum parasite can turn on and off to evade the immune system. I decided to choose one of these proteins for analysis as I want to understand the mechanism of this one protein individually to begin to understand the many different ways a malarial infection can occur within the human body.