First malaria-human contact mapped with Nobel Prize-winning technology

Scientists have taken a significant step toward developing a new vaccine for malaria, revealing for the first time an 'atomic-scale' blueprint of how the parasite invades human cells. Using the Nobel Prize-winning technology cryo-EM (cryo-electron microscopy), the researchers mapped the previously hidden first contact between Plasmodium vivax malaria parasites and young red blood cells they invade to begin the parasites' spread throughout the body.