Last night I took the ferry across Long Island Sound to spend the day in Stony Brook at Evolution 2006, the joint annual meeting of American Society of Naturalists, the Society for the Study of Evolution, and the Society of Systematic Biologists. About 1500 scientists were there, and there were enough talks going on–often simultaneously–to keep me in constant motion from eight in the morning till eleven at night.
Author: Lori Jia
The New York Times, June 21, 2006
On paper, Toxoplasma gondii looks as if it ought to be the most famous parasite on Earth. This single-celled pathogen infects more than half the world’s population.
Each of Toxoplasma’s victims carries thousands of the parasites, many residing in the brain. And Toxoplasma is equally adept at infecting all other warm-blooded animals.
Scientists are now discovering some of the secrets of Toxoplasma’s success. Researchers in Sweden report that the parasite fans out through the body by manipulating mobile cells that are part of the immune system.
Continue reading “Unlocking secrets of an obscure but powerful parasite”
It’s been twenty months now since scientists reported discovering fossils on the Indonesian island of Flores belonging to a three-foot-tall hominid with a brain the size of a chimp that lived recently as 12,000 years ago. Homo floresiensis, as this hominid was dubbed, has inspired two clashing interpretations. Its discoverers declared it a separate species descended from another branch of hominids. In others words, the most recent common ancestor we share with Homo floresiensis lived two or even three million years ago. Skeptics argued that the fossils belonged to human pygmies. The one fossil of a Homo floresiensis brain-case belonged to a female with a rare genetic defect. In brief: healthy hominid versus deformed human.
The New York Times, June 20, 2006
On paper, Toxoplasma gondii looks as if it ought to be the most famous parasite on earth. This single-celled pathogen infects over half the world’s population, including an estimated 50 million Americans. Each of Toxoplasma’s victims carries thousands of the parasites, many residing in the brain. As if that were not enough of an accomplishment, Toxoplasma is equally adept at infecting all other warm-blooded animals, as disparate as chickens and kangaroos.
Scientists are now discovering some of the secrets of Toxoplasma’s success. Researchers in Sweden report that the parasite fans out through the body by manipulating mobile cells that are part of the immune system.
Continue reading “A Common Parasite Reveals Its Strongest Asset: Stealth”
Next time I go to the doctor, I think I’ll get him to give me a test for Toxoplasma. Fifty million Americans have the parasite, so I wouldn’t be the first. And if I was carrying it around in my head, that might explain why it’s so fascinating to me.
I first encountered the strange ways of this single-celled creature while working on my book Parasite Rex, and since then I’ve tried to keep up with new research on what makes it so successful. In January I wrote on the Loom about a potential link between Toxoplasma and schizophrenia.