Kathleen Zhong

Kathleen Zhong is a Research Analyst at Sandra A. Rotman Laboratories, McLaughlin Rotman Centre for Global Health within the Translational Research Pillar.

Kathleen's role in the lab is to perform PCR diagnosis testing of malaria. Detection of malaria species by nested polymerase chain reaction is an accurate way to identify the four human malaria parasite species based on the sequence of their small subunit ribosomal RNA genes. When parasite levels are very low and in the cases of mixed species infections, diagnosis by microscopy smear is difficult, PCR diagnosis provides higher sensitivity and specificity of plasmodium species, including a new sequence variant of plasmodium ovale. Drug resistant gene markers can also be identified by PCR and sequencing.