This page is under construction.
Plasmodium, the parasitic protists that cause malaria undergo a complex life cycle involving a large number of developmental changes in both human and mosquito hosts. A fairly detailed detailed description of that life cycle is presented below. To help you follow things, here's a relatively brief bullet-list description of the Plasmodium life cycle.
Plasmodium, the parasitic protists that cause malaria undergo a complex life cycle involving a large number of developmental changes in both human and mosquito hosts. A fairly detailed detailed description of that life cycle is presented below. To help you follow things, here's a relatively brief bullet-list description of the Plasmodium life cycle.
- Sporozoite (haploid): Haploid cells that form from meiotic division of diploid oocysts in the gut of a mosquito. Sporozoites infect mosquito salivary glands, and are the form that enters the human blood stream.
- Hypnozoite (haploid): The "sleeping" stage that can lie dormant in human liver cells between relapses of recurrent malaria.
- Schizont: A host cell in which some stage of Plasmodium is actively dividing by mitosis, producing many haploid offspring that will break out of the host cell, e.g., a red blood cell full of merozoites.
- Merozoite (haploid): The stage that infects human red blood cells.
- Trophozoite (haploid): A stage derived from a merozoite inside red blood cells. Trophozoites divide by mitosis to produce more merozoites or gametocytes.
- Gametocytes (haploid): The stage that can infect a mosquito.
- Microgametocyte (haploid): One of two kinds of cell derived from gametocytes. Microgameteocytes develop into microgametes (one microgametocyte develops into eight microgametes).
- Megagametocyte (haploid): One of two kinds of cell derived from gametocytes. Megagametocytes develop to become megagametes (one megagametocyte becomes one megagamete).
- Microgamete (haploid): Fuses with a megagametocyte to form a zygote. Think of it as the equivalent of a Plasmodium sperm cell.
- Megagamete (haploid): Fuses with a microgamete to form a zygote. Think of it as the equivalent of a Plasmodium egg cell.
- Zygote (diploid): Diploid cell produced by the fusion of a microgamete and a megagamete. Zygotes develop to become ookinetes.
- Ookinete (diploid): A mobile cell that invades the gut of the mosquito and develops into an oocyst.
- Oocyst (diploid): This stage divides by meiosis to produce haploid sporozoites, which later infect the salivary glands of the mosquito.