**2. History**

The organism itself was first seen by Lavern on November 6, 1880 at a military hospital in Constantine, Algeria, when he discovered a microgametocyte exflagellating. In 1885, similar organisms were discovered within the blood of birds in Russia. There was brief speculation that birds might be involved in the transmission of malaria; in 1894 Patrick Manson hypothesized that mosquito could transmit malaria. This hypothesis was independently confirmed by the Italian physician Giovanni Battista Grassi working in Italy and the British physician Ronald Ross working in India, both in 1898. [3] Ross demonstrated the existence of *Plasmodium* in the wall of the midgut and salivary glands of a Culex mosquito using bird species as the vertebrate host. For this discovery he won the Noble Prize in 1902. Grassi showed that human malaria could only be transmitted by *Anopheles* mosquito. It is worth noting, however, that for some species the vector may not be mosquito.[4]

## **3. Biology**

The genome of four *plasmodium* species – *plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium knowlest, Plasmodium vivax* and *Plasmodium yoelii* – have been sequenced. All these species have genomes of about 25 megabase organized into 14 chromosomes consistent with earlier estimates. The chromosomes vary in length from 500 kilobases to 3.5 megabases and it is presumed that this is the pattern throughout the genus.[5]
