Malaria Parasites. Genomes and Molecular Biology

Abstract

A. P. Waters & C. J. Janse, Eds. Caister Academic Press, Wymondham, UK, 2004. ISBN 0-9542464-6-2. £115.00, 546 pp.This well-conceived and useful book is in part a celebration of what was achieved when the annotated Plasmodium falciparum genome sequence was published in 2002 (Nature419, 498 and articles following). As such, this might have been an unreadable journey through the arcane labyrinth of post-genomics and bioinformatics, but instead it is more a tour of Plasmodium parasite biology, designed to illuminate the scientific contexts in which the genome information will be analysed and interpreted. Thus 13 of the 16 chapters describe distinct areas of malaria-related knowledge, methods for manipulating the parasite genome and model systems based on other plasmodia and apicomplexans.