• Question: is it possible for you to catch Malaria as you are working with it every day?

    Asked by kennedy to Ailsa on 15 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Ailsa Powell

      Ailsa Powell answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi Kennedy,
      Thanks for your concern! Fortunately it is not possible for me to catch Malaria.

      I look at a specific part of the malarial parasite – just one protein. To get a lot of this protein so I can do the experiments I want to do on it I have cloned the gene for the protein into bacteria. In biochemistry labs we often use bacteria as protein making factories. Bacteria are easy and quick to grow and the ones we use in the lab are very safe (although they do smell bad!), so by forcing the bacteria to make the protein I want, I can do all the experiments I want to do without any chance of getting ill.

      Hope that makes sense 🙂

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