Purification and characterisation of plasmodium falciparum Hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase

• Main Author: Murungi, Edwin Kimathi
• Other Authors: McIntosh, David B.
• Language: en
• Published: University of the Western Cape 2013
• Subjects: Plasmodium falciparum; Bioinformatics; Protein; Oligomeric structure; Hypoxanthine Phosphoribosyltransferase; Crystallization; Homology modeling; Photoaffinity labeling
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11394/2399

Magister Scientiae - MSc === Malaria remains the most important parasitic disease worldwide. It is estimated that over 500 million infections and more that 2.7 million deaths arising from malaria occur each year. Most (90%) of the infections occur in Africa with the most affected groups being children of less than five years of age and women. this dire situation is exacerbated by the emrggence of drug resistant strains of Plasmodium falciparum. The work reported in this thesis focuses on improving the purification of PfHPRT by investigating the characteristics of anion exchange DE-52 chromatography (the first stage of purification), developing an HPLC gel filtration method for examining the quaternary structure of the protein and possible end stage purification, and initialcrystalization trials. a homology model of the open, unligaded PfHPRT is constructed using the atoomic structures of human, T.ccruz and STryphimurium HPRT as templates. === South Africa