Considered one of the “big three” global infectious diseases—together with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis—malaria caused by Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax continues to substantially affect the poorest communities of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (1). Development of resistance to almost all antimalarial drugs by the parasite, resistance of the Anopheles mosquito (which transmits the parasite) to commonly used insecticides, and variable efficacy of the two malaria vaccines recommended by the World Health Organization (2) mean that basic and translational research are the cornerstones of a global response to the disease. Indeed, there is still much unknown about the biology of Plasmodium. On page 527 of this issue, Dogga et al. (3) report a reference atlas for single-cell transcriptomic data spanning the complete life cycle of P. falciparum. The study included natural infections of four asymptomatic children from Mali, revealing distinct behavior of such infections compared with that of two standard laboratory strains.

中文翻译：

---

僵尸疟原虫

由恶性疟原虫和间日疟原虫引起的疟疾与艾滋病毒/艾滋病和结核病一起被视为全球“三大”传染病之一，继续严重影响撒哈拉以南非洲和东南亚最贫困的社区 ( 1 )。寄生虫对几乎所有抗疟药物产生抗药性，按蚊（传播寄生虫）对常用杀虫剂产生抗药性，以及世界卫生组织推荐的两种疟疾疫苗的不同功效（2）意味着基本和转化研究是全球应对这一疾病的基石。事实上，关于疟原虫的生物学特性仍然有很多未知之处。在本期第 527 页，Dogga等人。 ( 3 ) 报告恶性疟原虫整个生命周期的单细胞转录组数据参考图谱。该研究包括四名来自马里无症状儿童的自然感染，揭示了此类感染与两种标准实验室菌株的不同行为。