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Using fat to turbo-charge intracellular parasite growth
1Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Bio21 Institute of Molecular Science and Biotechnology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010 Australia.
Cell Host & Microbe
|December 16, 2014
Abstract:
Early during infection, the malaria parasite invades liver cells and undergoes robust replication, generating thousands of new parasites within days. In this issue of Cell Host & Microbe, Itoe et al. (2014) show that parasite replication in the liver depends on the synthesis of host bulk phospholipids, which are incorporated into the expanding parasite and surrounding vacuolar membranes.