Plasmodium: More Don’ts

Many authors use ‘malaria’ as a synonym for both the disease and its causative agent. Just as bubonic plague describes one medical condition caused by the prokaryote Yersinia pestis, malaria describes the disease caused by members of the protist genus Plasmodium. One can refer to the organism as the malaria-causing parasite, or even the malaria agent, but avoid phrases like ‘malaria life cycle’, ‘malaria antigens’, or ‘malaria genome’