Del Portillo, Hernando A.Mongui, AlvaroPérez-Llanos, Francy J.Yamamoto, Marcio M.Lozano, MarcelaZambrano, Maria M.Portillo, Patricis DelFernández Becerra, María del CarmenRestrepo, SilviaJunca, Howard2016-02-042016-02-042015-06-041475-2875https://hdl.handle.net/2445/69246BACKGROUND: The chemical treatment of Plasmodium falciparum for human infections is losing efficacy each year due to the rise of resistance. One possible strategy to find novel anti-malarial drugs is to access the largest reservoir of genomic biodiversity source on earth present in metagenomes of environmental microbial communities. METHODS: A bioluminescent P. falciparum parasite was used to quickly detect shifts in viability of microcultures grown in 96-well plates. A synthetic gene encoding the Dermaseptin 4 peptide was designed and cloned under tight transcriptional control in a large metagenomic insert context (30 kb) to serve as proof-of-principle for the screening platform. RESULTS: Decrease in parasite viability consistently correlated with bioluminescence emitted from parasite microcultures, after their exposure to bacterial extracts containing a plasmid or fosmid engineered to encode the Dermaseptin 4 anti-malarial peptide. CONCLUSIONS: Here, a new technical platform to access the anti-malarial potential in microbial environmental metagenomes has been developed.6 p.application/pdfengcc by (c) Mongui et al., 2015http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/GenòmicaGenètica microbianaMalàriaPlasmodium falciparumResistència als medicamentsEfecte dels medicaments sobre els microorganismesGenomicsMicrobial geneticsMalariaPlasmodium falciparumDrug resistanceEffect of drugs on microorganismsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article2016-02-02info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess26040274