Xu &
Hurts
Artist
Mia Hurts
-undergraduate student
- Emory University
Scientist
Lennox Xu
- 4th year undergraduate ​
- Emory University
'The Malaria Monstrosity'
by Mia Hurts
Artist's narrative
The science behind the artwork I have presented pertains to malaria which is a disease that mainly occurs when a mosquito bites a human. The parasitic infection can cause detrimental effects on the body. The symptoms are fever and flu-like illness, including shaking chills, headache, muscle aches, and tiredness. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may also occur. In the piece I created, I focused on the parasite entering the body and through a small hole which usually occurs during a mosquito puncture. The body is inflamed which is signified through the red coloring and the main organs such as the lungs, heart, liver, kidney, pancreas, and intestines are destroyed. The rips in the paper symbolize how severe malaria is when it enters the body, it can go as far as creating a parasitic plague that results in death.
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Abstract
By Lennox Xu
Previous studies have shown that, following infection, inflammation is a consequence of Malaria Plasmodium infection (Mimche, Lee et al. 2019). More specifically, this inflammation is linked to the downregulation of drug-metabolizing enzymes which may impair drug clearance (Mimche, Lee et al. 2019). In this research investigation, we expanded on these previous studies and examined whether metabolites were altered in a mouse model of Malaria Plasmodium infection. We analyzed uninfected and infected mouse samples with high resolution metabolomics in order to identify metabolic pathways associated with this infection. After the generation of the features, we found 136 metabolites that were significantly different from 40988 metabolites. Our data suggested that arachidonic metabolism pathways were altered by Plasmodium infection. This provides evidence that a certain set of metabolites are biologically validated as a metabolic response to infection, which could potentially serve as a template for inflammation-related pathways in mice. This template could lead to a better monitoring of inflammation in people infected with malaria and help facilitate the creation of more targeted anti-malarial drugs. Future analysis of the data includes the examination of the Malaria infection time course and searching for how the significant metabolites change over time.