Groundbreaking research done at Singapore's Nanyang
Technological University's (NTU) School of Biological Sciences
(SBS) could lead to the development of more potent drugs or a
vaccine for malaria, which is transmitted to humans by infected
mosquitoes and kills up to three million people each year.
Assistant Professor Zbynek Bozdech and his team of researchers,
including graduate students and post-doctorals from SBS'
Division of Genomics & Genetics, have scored a world first in
successfully using transcriptional profiling to uncover hitherto
unknown gene expression (activity) patterns in malaria. The
research team's breakthrough made the January 2010 edition of
the top-ranked journal, Nature Biotechnology, which is a
satellite publication of Nature, the world's leading peer-
reviewed journal. Transcriptional profiling is the measurement
of the activity of thousands of genes at once, to create a
global picture of cellular function. These profiles can, for
example, distinguish between cells that are actively div