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Balanced Impacts Of Fitness And Drug Pressure On The Evolution Of Pfmdr1 Polymorphisms In Plasmodium Falciparum., Marvin Duvalsaint, Melissa D. Conrad, Stephen Tukwasibwe, Patrick K. Tumwebaze, Jennifer Legac, Roland A. Cooper, Philip J. Rosenthal

Natural Sciences and Mathematics | Faculty Scholarship

BACKGROUND: Anti-malarial drug resistance may be limited by decreased fitness in resistant parasites. Important contributors to resistance are mutations in the Plasmodium falciparum putative drug transporter PfMDR1.

METHODS: Impacts on in vitro fitness of two common PfMDR1 polymorphisms, N86Y, which is associated with sensitivity to multiple drugs, and Y184F, which has no clear impact on drug sensitivity, were evaluated to study associations between resistance mediators and parasite fitness, measured as relative growth in competitive culture experiments. NF10 P. falciparum lines engineered to represent all PfMDR1 N86Y and Y184F haplotypes were co-cultured for 40 days, and the genetic make-up of the …