Unravelling the evolutive history of Malaria through a Multi-Omics approach

Malaria is a deadly mosquito-borne disease caused by Plasmodium's parasite. Malaria was historically present in Europe from the 5th century BC until the 20th century. Palaeogenomic investigations of skeletal remains and historical medical slides yielded three draft genomes, revealing P. falciparum's presence in Italy 2,000 years ago and confirming P. vivax's presence in modern Europe. Unfortunately, due to its low coverage, the ancient P. falciparum genome has limited valuable information. However, these studies suggest that P. falciparum could have been imported from Asia to Europe, and P. vivax may have been brought to America by Europeans in the 15th century. My project focuses on developing methods to recover ancient and modern Plasmodium DNA and proteins, enabling us to study its natural history, evolution, virulence, and spread across continents during this timeframe. This project combines archaeology, biological anthropology, history, evolutionary biology, and immunology.