Abstract
Malaria, a leading parasitic killer, is caused by Plasmodium spp. The pathology of the disease starts when Plasmodium merozoites infect erythrocytes to form rings, that matures through a large trophozoite form and develop into schizonts containing multiple merozoites. The number of intra-erythrocytic merozoites is a key-determining factor for multiplication rate of the parasite. Counting of intraerythrocytic merozoites by classical 2-D microscopy method is error prone due to insufficient representation of merozoite in one optical plane of a schizont. Here, we report an alternative 3-D microscopy based automated method for counting of intraerythrocytic merozoites in entire volume of schizont. This method offers a considerable amount of advantages in terms of both, ease and accuracy.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award from DBT (to SS) for the upgradation of Confocal Microscope at ICGEB. Authors also thank ICGEB for access to Confocal Microscopy Facility and Imaris software.
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The authors declare no competing financial interests.
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Garg, S., Agarwal, S., Dabral, S. et al. Visualization and quantification of Plasmodium falciparum intraerythrocytic merozoites. Syst Synth Biol 9 (Suppl 1), 23–26 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11693-015-9167-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11693-015-9167-9