Malaria

The life-cycle of the malaria parasite begins when it bites a human and injects the parasite. Once injected into the blood, the sporozoites direct towards the liver and within 30 minutes, the parasite has successfully invaded the liver cells. The sporozoites then transform into merozoites and multiply rapidly to produce thousands of more merozoites. Shortly after, the merozoites burst out of the liver and invade red blood cells into the bloodstream where they multiply even further. After 48 hours, the amount of merozoites increases to the point that the red blood cells burst, infecting numerous red blood cells. Over the span of 10 days, some merozoites will develop into gametocytes, which are the sexual form of the parasite. When another mosquito sucks up blood from an infected human, they take up the gametocytes, which will mature into gametes in the mosquito's gut.