The parasite that causes malaria, a disease that kills more than 600,000 people a year worldwide, uses special sensors to act, which, if properly manipulated, can disorient and deactivate the pathogen, according to a study by the University of Geneva (UNIGE).
The discovery, published in Science Advances, could be a big step in the fight against the disease, which is particularly deadly in sub-Saharan Africa and affects nearly 250 million people worldwide every year, UNIGE said in a statement. .
Experts led by Mathieu Brochet, a professor at the University’s Department of Microbiology, have discovered that the parasite that causes malaria, the genus Plasmodium, has sensors that other microbes don’t have that can tell humans from mosquitoes. .