Malaria, caused by parasites of the species Plasmodium, is among the major life-threatening diseases to afflict humanity. The infectious cycle of Plasmodium is very complex involving distinct life stages and transitions characterized by cellular and molecular alterations. Therefore, novel single-cell technologies are warranted to extract details pertinent to Plasmodium-host cell interactions and underpinning biological transformations. Herein, we tested two emerging spectroscopic approaches: (a) Optical Photothermal Infrared spectroscopy and (b) Atomic Force Microscopy combined with infrared spectroscopy in contrast to (c) Fourier Transform InfraRed microspectroscopy, to investigate Plasmodium-infected erythrocytes. Chemical spatial distributions of selected bands and spectra captured using the three modalities for major macromolecules together with advantages and limitations of each method is presented here. These results indicate that O-PTIR and AFM-IR techniques can be explored for extracting sub-micron resolution molecular signatures within heterogeneous and dynamic samples such as Plasmodium-infected human RBCs.

由疟原虫属寄生虫引起的疟疾是折磨人类的主要威胁生命的疾病之一。疟原虫的感染周期非常复杂，涉及不同的生命阶段和以细胞和分子改变为特征的转变。因此，新的单细胞技术有必要提取与疟原虫-宿主细胞相互作用和支持生物转化相关的细节。在此，我们测试了两种新兴的光谱方法：(a) 光学光热红外光谱和 (b) 原子力显微镜与红外光谱相结合，与 (c) 傅立叶变换红外显微光谱形成对比，以研究疟原虫-感染的红细胞。此处介绍了使用主要大分子的三种模式捕获的选定波段和光谱的化学空间分布以及每种方法的优点和局限性。这些结果表明，可以探索 O-PTIR 和 AFM-IR 技术，以提取异质和动态样品（例如疟原虫感染的人类红细胞）中的亚微米分辨率分子特征。