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Maria vs Malaria

Author(s): Didem Vardar-Ulu1, Serena Yu1, Alicia Lau1, Molly Szpakowski1

Boston University

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Summary:
This case study focuses on a specific enzyme Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) in the malarial parasite as a target for treating malaria.

Licensed under CC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International according to these terms

Version 1.0 - published on 02 Nov 2023 doi:10.25334/RSGM-5K80 - cite this

Keywords

  1. bioinformatics
  2. molecular visualization
  3. structure-function
  4. uniprot
  5. Protein Data Bank
  6. Molecular Case Study
  7. Molecular CaseNet

Alignments

  1. Resource Type
  2. Audience Level
  3. Open Science and Education Practices Ontology
Contents:
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Description

Maria vs Malaria

Overview: The case discusses an environmental scientist Maria’s search for an antimalarial drug treatment after she contracts Malaria during her research trip to the Amazon Rainforest.  The case begins with her confirming that her symptoms were from Malaria via rapid diagnostic and then her doctors identifying the specific Malaria parasite to be Plasmodium falciparum. Through information she received from her colleague at the Center for Disease Control (CDC)  and her own research, she starts focusing on a newly identified Lactate Dehydrogenase inhibitor to determine if it could be used as a safe and effective treatment for Malaria.  The case explores the structure-function relationship of the critical metabolic enzyme Lactate Dehydrogenase and exemplifies how small molecular differences between the active sites of the same enzyme from two different organisms (in this case Plasmodium Falciparum and human) could be leveraged to develop selective competitive inhibitors of the enzyme to provide safe and effective drug treatments. 

Molecules Explored: Lactate Dehydrogenase (both parasitic and human), in complex with the coenzyme NADH (Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) and a competitive inhibitor.

Notes

This is the original version of the MCS, with author provided front image and teaching notes.

A few formatting issues and figure annotations were updated in the student and teacher versions of the MCS - version date 20231118, updated on 20240119.

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