The Culture and Preparation of Gametocytes of Plasmodium falciparum for Immunochemical, Molecular, and Mosquito Infectivity Studies

Since the development of methods for in vitro cultivation of the asexual blood stages of P.faZciparum (1 ) and the production of mature gametocytes from such cultures capable of infecting mosquitoes (2 ), it has been possible to conduct a wide range of studies on the sexual stages of P. filciparum . These include studies on the infectivity of the gametocytes of this parasite to mosquitoes (3 ) and the biology of the parasites in the vector (4 ) including studies on transmission blocking immunity using monoclonal antibodies against gamete surface antigens (5 ) and human sera following natural malarial infections (6 ). The developmental origin of sexual stages of P. fulcipurum has been studied in culture (7 ) and biochemical and immunochemical studies have been done to identify and characterize sexual stage specific proteins, especially those that are targets of transmission blocking antibodies (5 ). The genes encoding several sexual stage specific proteins have been identified and fully sequenced (8 –10 ).