Dr. Nisha Philip
Senior Lecturer in Infection
- Institute of Immunology and Infection Research
Contact details
- Tel: 0131 6517780
- Email: nphilip@ed.ac.uk
- Web: Philip Lab
Address
- Street
-
Ashworth Laboratories 2, Rm3.11
- City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH9 3FL
Qualifications
Ph.D. , Dept. of Pharmacology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
M.S. , Dept. of Biology, Texas A & M University, College Station, TX, USA
M.Sc. , Dept. of Biosciences and Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India
B.Sc. , Dept. of Biochemistry, Delhi University, New Delhi, India
Research summary
Malaria threatens around 400 million people globally and results in over 0.5 million deaths annually, thereby continuing to be a major public health problem. In the absence of an effective vaccine, emerging drug resistant strains are of grave concern and consequently, there is an urgent need to develop new therapeutics. To tackle this problem, we use the rodent malaria parasite, Plasmodium berghei, to understand function of key players crucial to parasite development and transmission. Two areas of research focus include:
Organisation of signaling pathways during malaria parasite infection and transmission
Protein phosphorylation and ubiquitination play a central role in numerous signalling pathways critical to cell proliferation and development. In Plasmodium, the causal agent of malaria, these pathways are critical for its development and virulence, but the associated regulatory signalling networks are poorly understood.
Using state of the art proteomic, chemical genetic and bioinformatics tools we intend to systematically define functional signaling networks regulated by phosphorylation and ubiquitin modulating enzymes during two key stages of the malaria parasite life cycle: host cell infection and host-to-mosquito transmission.
RNA binding proteins mediated regulation of Plasmodium development
The malaria parasite has a complex life cycle requiring both a mammalian host and mosquito vector. Almost 200 RNA binding proteins (RBPs) are expressed at distinct stages of Plasmodium lifecyle where they are implicated in both parasite development, and host-to-vector and vector-to-host transitions. We recently identified a family of RBPs which play crucial roles in parasite growth in the host erythrocyte and development of the mosquito infective form. We aim to understand how these RBPs are regulated and what RNA molecules they regulate.