Simone Sandiford
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I am a postdoctoral fellow who joined the Dimopoulos group in April 2010 after completing my Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the University of Miami. I am interested in elucidating the mechanism of action of some of the previously identified Plasmodium effectors.
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Contact: ssandifo@jhsph.edu
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Bio - current research - cv - links
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Bio:
I am a postdoctoral fellow who joined the Dimopoulos group in April 2010 after completing my Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology at the University of Miami. I am interested in elucidating the mechanism of action of some of the previously identified Plasmodium effectors.  Current research: In mosquitoes, Plasmodium defense is controlled by a variety of genes that are components of the innate immune system. While a variety of anti-Plasmodium immune effectors have been identified an partially characterized, their mechanism of action has for the most part not been elucidated. We hypothesized that most of these proteins are not acting against the parasite alone, but in association with other protein factors. I have employed a yeast two hybrid system (Y2H) to identify binding partners of previously identified immune factors. Using these anti-Plasmodium molecules as “baits”, and “preys” from two distinct mosquito cDNA libraries, we have identified a number of potential interactions between our “baits” and proteins with known and unknown functions. Currently we are in the process of reverse genetic functional studies to further investigate the role of these proteins in the mosquito's defense against the malaria parasite. Sine we are particularly interested in understanding the mosquito's immune surveillance system which is responsible for recognizing pathogens as non-self, I have used a bacterial binding assay in conjunction with a proteomic iTRAQ analysis to identify mosquito proteins that bind with high affinity to bacteria associated molecular patterns. I am also involved in a project that aims at the characterization of the Anopheles immune responsive proteome and metabolome, to better understand these processes and correlation to the transcriptome. |