With malaria's re-emergence as the world's most lethal infection in its drug-resistant forms, development of new anti-malarials has been an urgent need. Since the virulence genes of the parasite have been identified in the sub-telomeric regions, understanding the telomeres and the associated enzyme telomerase has attracted much attention as possible ways to combat the disease. Recently, the Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase (TERT) was identified in four Plasmodium species. The RNA component of this nucleoprotein however, has not yet been identified. It will be essential that the RNA component be identified, quantified, and characterized to understand this machinery that is essential for parasite proliferation. The goal of the project is to identify and characterize the RNA component from malaria parasite and uncover the processing of the ribonucleoprotein complex in malaria life cycle.