The goal of the Niles lab is to establish, through technological innovations, new avenues to discovering fundamental malaria parasite biology that can be translated into much-needed diagnostic, preventative and therapeutic solutions.

The lab’s long-term goal is to create a diverse and easy-to-use molecular toolkit for robustly controlling gene expression and protein function, thereby enabling the efficient elucidation of parasite gene function. The lab emphasizes constructing tools that are multi-purpose and broadly applicable across different organisms, including model systems and especially less genetically tractable pathogens. In some instances, the lab tailors existing technologies to make them compatible with unique aspects of our target organism biology. Alternatively, the lab uses basic principles gleaned from nature to design and systematically develop novel strategies for achieving gene regulation.