How Quinine Fights Malaria, and How That Caused* World War One

Can a medicine cause a war? When chemists isolated a new compound from the bark of a South American tree, they had no idea they were changing world history, and cocktails, forever.

If we look at how the bark of the cinchona tree is used to treat malaria, we can see cutting edge chemistry showing quinine binding to an enzyme that is essential for the malaria parasite’s survival. But if we look from another angle, we can see how that coincidental affinity may have been a major contributing factor to World War One.
#malaria #medicinalchemistry #history

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The cellular thermal shift assay for evaluating drug target interactions in cells
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Population genetic analysis of the DARC locus (Duffy) reveals adaptation from standing variation associated with malaria resistance in humans
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Susceptibility to Plasmodium vivax malaria associated with DARC (Duffy antigen) polymorphisms is influenced by the time of exposure to malaria
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Plasmodium falciparum purine nucleoside phosphorylase is critical for viability of malaria parasites
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Types of Malaria Parasites
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Quinine, an old anti-malarial drug in a modern world: role in the treatment of malaria
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Malaria’s Impact Worldwide
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Portrait of a serial killer
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Quinine's Target
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Quinine fever
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Dramatic evolution within human genome may have been caused by malaria parasite
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German Empire
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Berlin 1884: Remembering the conference that divided Africa
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