Robert Ménard and Rogerio Amino, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Institut Pasteur, respectively, have used real-time imaging to discover how Plasmodium falciparum, the protozoan which causes malaria, evades the human immune system during the stages of its life cycle that take place inside the human body.
They have found that the parasite cloaks itself in the membranes of dead liver cells as it is transferred from infected hepatocytes (liver cells) to erythrocytes (red blood cells). It is during this stage of the parasite’s life cycle that the symptoms of malaria first appear.
The film clip below shows images captured by time-lapse microscopy; green fluorescent protein-expressing Plasmodium are contained within a vesicle, which can be seen budding and transferring material:
