Fig. 1.
From: Teaching old drugs new tricks to stop malaria invasion in its tracks
Two independent targets for macrolide antibiotics in Plasmodium falciparum. Azithromycin inhibits protein synthesis in the apicoplast (green). Loss of translation in the plastid ultimately starves the parasite (grey) for the essential isoprenoid precursor isopentenyl-pyrophosphate (IPP). Wilson et al. describe a second mode of action in which azithromycin blocks an early step in the process used by the parasite to invade red blood cells (RBC, red). This effect is much faster, but requires higher concentrations of drug