38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Invertebrate Pathology

Malaria is one of the deadliest infectious diseases that kills about 2 million persons every year. New strategies to contain transmission are urgently needed and interruption of the parasite cycle in the mosquito (the obligatory vector) is an option that needs to be explored. Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that molecular recognition is a requisite for sporozoite invasion of the mosquito salivary gland, but information on this subject is scant. Using a phage display library we have previously identified SM1, a dodecapeptide that binds to the salivary gland and importantly, inhibits parasite invasion. By use of a combination of approaches including UV-crosslinking pull-down experiments, Western blotting of sporozoite proteins with an anti-SM1 antibody and protein identification using mass spectrometry, we have identified a putative salivary gland receptor (the surface protein saglin) and the interacting sporozoite surface protein (TRAP). We will present data that led to these findings and discuss its implications for future work.