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Mosquito and plasmodium

Sent to General Experts July 14 12:24 AM

Why do the malaria plasmodium sporozoites migrate to the mosquito's salivary glands?

Customer (name blocked for privacy)
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July 14 4:10 AM (3 hours and 46 minutes and 19 seconds later)
         
REPLIEDCheck Mark
This is because if they did not, they would not be transmitted to
new hosts when they were bitten by the mosquito carrying them.   
The plasmodium would die when the mosquito did, and the
species would rapidly become extinct.
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July 14 9:53 AM (5 hours and 42 minutes and 10 seconds later)
         
Reply to xarqi's Post: Plasmodium are not capable of rational thought so what mechanism or cause drives them to penetrate and wait in the mosquito's salivary gland?
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Answer
July 14 8:02 PM (10 hours and 9 minutes and 48 seconds later)
         
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You asked why, not how, and that is the question I answered.

In general terms, salivary gland targeting is thought to be due to
a ligand-receptor interaction, but the precise molecular basis
does not appear to have been unambiguously identified.
Candidates include MAEBL for the sporozoite component (link), and SGS-1 for the salivary gland component (link).

There may be more recent work, and if I find some, I'll post an update.
---
Here's a paper where antibody blockade of a salivary gland target is shown to be effective in restricting sporozoite entry:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=11087838&qu ery_hl=4


Edited by xarqi on July 14 2005 at 11:35 PM
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July 20 1:05 PM (5 days and 17 hours later)
         
Reply to xarqi's Post: Sorry for the delay - been off on other sujects for a while.

I guess we could get into a very interesting but long debate. In my world where the subject is not capable of rational decision making, "why" includes the "how." :-)

I was hoping for a definitive answer on this - the MAEBL paper may be part of it - I read that article back in June. The SGS snippet gives no back up - more speculative than definitive and a bit dated but I have contacted a source in WHO it linked to indirectly. Perhaps there is no definitive answer to my question.

I have appreciasted your input and your offer to keep looking. Although you haven't given me the specific answer I was looking for, you have moved me forward in my search so I think it's time to pay up - better find out how to do that. If you do come across anything - I'd appreciate the heads up - I'll happily accept your emails outside here - try dredwood2005-first@yahoo.com.

Thanks
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