Paola Carrillo-Bustamante

Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology | MPIIB · Department of Vector Biology

Mosquitoes are vectors of human life-threatening pathogens, posing a significant global health threat. While the influence of temperature on mosquito life-history traits has been extensively studied in laboratory settings, the ecological factors shaping mosquito development and population dynamics in natural environments remain poorly understood. H...

The life-history of multicellular organisms is a collection of traits determining fitness described by growth, survival, and reproduction. Within-host survival and between-host transmission are key life-history traits of single-celled malaria parasites. Therefore, understanding the evolutionary forces that shape these components is crucial to predi...

Malaria, a major cause of child mortality in Africa, is engendered by Plasmodium parasites that are transmitted by anopheline mosquitoes. Fitness of Plasmodium parasites is closely linked to the ecology and evolution of its anopheline vector. However, whether the genetic structure of vector populations impacts malaria transmission remains unknown....

Pathogens face varying microenvironments in vivo, but suitable experimental systems and analysis tools to dissect how three-dimensional (3D) tissue environments impact pathogen spread are lacking. Here we develop an Integrative method to Study Pathogen spread by Experiment and Computation within Tissue-like 3D cultures (INSPECT-3D), combining quant...

Malaria is a fatal human parasitic disease transmitted by a mosquito vector. Although the evolution of within-host malaria virulence has been the focus of many theoretical and empirical studies, the vector's contribution to this process is not well understood. Here, we explore how within-vector resource exploitation would impact the evolution of wi...

The activity of natural killer (NK) cells is tightly regulated by inhibitory and activating receptors. Inhibitory killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (iKIRs) survey the surface of target cells by monitoring the expression of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I. The binding of iKIRs has been shown to be sensitive to the peptides presented by HLA...

Ribavirin is a broad spectrum antiviral which inhibits Lassa virus (LASV) replication in vitro but exhibits a minor effect on viremia in vivo. However, ribavirin significantly improves the disease outcome when administered in combination with sub-optimal doses of favipiravir, a strong antiviral drug. The mechanisms explaining these conflicting find...

Natural killer (NK) cells are immune cells that play a crucial role against viral infections and tumors. To be tolerant against healthy tissue and simultaneously attack infected cells, the activity of NK cells is tightly regulated by a sophisticated array of germline-encoded activating and inhibiting receptors. The best characterized mechanism of N...

Natural killer (NK) cells express inhibiting receptors (iNKRs), which specifically bind MHC-I molecules on the surface of healthy cells. When the expression of MHC-I on the cell surface decreases, which might occur during certain viral infections and cancer, iNKRs lose inhibiting signals and the infected cells become target for NK cell activation (...

Natural killer cell receptors (NKRs) monitor the expression of MHC class I and stress molecules to detect unhealthy tissue, such as infected or tumor cells. The NKR gene family shows a remarkable genetic diversity, containing several genes encoding receptors with activating and inhibiting signaling, and varying in gene content and allelic polymorph...

[This corrects the article on p. 20 in vol. 5, PMID: 24523722.].

The responsiveness of natural killer (NK) cells is controlled by balancing signals from activating and inhibitory receptors. The most important ligands of inhibitory NK cell receptors are the highly polymorphic major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I molecules, which allow NK cells to screen the cellular health of target cells. Although thes...

Inhibition of the atrial ultra-rapid delayed rectifier potassium current (I Kur) represents a promising therapeutic strategy in the therapy of atrial fibrillation. However, experimental and clinical data on the antiarrhythmic efficacy remain controversial. We tested the hypothesis that antiarrhythmic effects of I Kur inhibitors are dependent on kin...

Natural killer (NK) cells are circulating lymphocytes that play an important role in the control of viral infections and tumors. Their functions are regulated by several activating and inhibitory receptors. A subset of these receptors in human NK cells are the killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs), which interact with the highly polymorphic M...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a common pathology. AF modifies the electrophysiological properties of cells (remodeling) promoting the occurrence and maintenance of AF. Electrical remodeling includes changes in I_Ca,L, I_to, I_K1 and I_K,ACh.These effects were integrated in a human atrial computer model. Gap jun...

Atrial fibrillation is the most common cardiac arrhythmia in humans. The precise cellular mechanisms underlying atrial fibrillation are still poorly understood. Recent studies have identified several genetic defects as predisposing factors for this pathology. One of the identified genetic defects is the mutation N588K, which affects the cardiac IKr...