To survive, a parasite mixes and matches its disguises, study suggests

To survive, a parasite mixes and matches its disguises, study suggests.

From the news release

…By taking the first detailed look at how one such parasite periodically assumes a new protein disguise during a long-term infection, new research at Rockefeller University challenges many assumptions about one of the best-known examples of this strategy, called antigenic variation, in the parasite that causes African sleeping sickness.

..
Here’s how it works. Many animals, including humans, have immune systems capable of learning to recognize pathogens based on those pathogens’ antigens, usually proteins on their surface. After encountering an antigen, the immune system generates its own proteins called antibodies to target that antigen. By continually changing antigens, a pathogen evades those antibodies.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-survive-parasite-disguises.html#jCp

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-survive-parasite-disguises.html#jCp

Study reveals role of sex in spread of deadly disease

English: Life cycle of the parasites from the genus Leishmania, the cause of the disease Leishmaniasis. Français : Cycle de vie (en anglais) des parasites du genre Leishmania, responsables de la Leishmaniose. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Study reveals role of sex in spread of deadly disease.

 

 Research involving scientists at the University of York has provided important new information about transmission of human leishmaniasis, a group of infectious diseases which kills more than 100,000 people a year.

rofessor Deborah Smith of the Centre for Immunology and Infection at York, working with colleagues at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Charles University in Prague, has shown that “Leishmania” parasites reproduce sexually in the wild.

The research, published in PLOS Genetics, is a significant step forward in understanding how leishmaniasis is spread in endemic regions. Caused by “Leishmania”parasites, human leishmaniasis is a serious public health problem in more than 90 countries worldwide. There are high fatality rates among children and young people and those with suppressed immune systems. Pharmaceutical treatments are limited and there is no vaccine.

These microscopic organisms infect humans through the bite of a female blood-feeding sand fly carrying infective parasites in its gut. People only become infected, therefore, in geographical regions that are well-suited to support sand fly populations — those with suitable habitats, humidity and temperature. But the biology of the parasite in the sandfly is also critically important in determining the outcome of infection in man.

The new research uses DNA sequencing to investigate genetic variation at the highest level of resolution in “Leishmania “parasites isolated from sand flies caught in a defined focus of human leishmaniasis in south-east Turkey. This analysis provides evidence that “Leishmania “parasites can reproduce sexually in wild-caught sand flies, an event only detected previously under specialised laboratory conditions.. It also establishes, for the first time, quantitative estimates of the relative rates of sexual and asexual reproduction during the parasite life cycle.

 

Read entire article here

 

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Are Cancers Newly Evolved Species?

Staining chromosomes with different dyes highlights the orderly nature of the normal human karyotype (left), that is, humans have precisely two copies of each chromosome with no leftovers. A bladder cancer cell (right) has extra copies of some chromosomes, a few missing normal chromsomes, and a lot of hybrid or marker chromosomes, which characterize cancer cells. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California – Berkeley)

From the 26 July 2011 Science Daily article

Cancer patients may view their tumors as parasites taking over their bodies, but this is more than a metaphor for Peter Duesberg, a molecular and cell biology professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Cancerous tumors are parasitic organisms, he said. Each one is a new species that, like most parasites, depends on its host for food, but otherwise operates independently and often to the detriment of its host.

In a paper published in the July 1 issue of the journal Cell Cycle, Duesberg and UC Berkeley colleagues describe their theory that carcinogenesis — the generation of cancer — is just another form of speciation, the evolution of new species.

A molecular biologists has long believed that cancer results from chromosome disruption rather than a handful of gene mutations, which is the dominant theory today. That idea has led him to propose that cancers have actually evolved new chromosomal karyotypes that qualify them as autonomous species, akin to parasites and much different from their human hosts.

“Cancer is comparable to a bacterial level of complexity, but still autonomous, that is, it doesn’t depend on other cells for survival; it doesn’t follow orders like other cells in the body, and it can grow where, when and how it likes,” said Duesberg. “That’s what species are all about.”

This novel view of cancer could yield new insights into the growth and metastasis of cancer, Duesberg said, and perhaps new approaches to therapy or new drug targets. In addition, because the disrupted chromosomes of newly evolved cancers are visible in a microscope, it may be possible to detect cancers earlier, much as today’s Pap smear relies on changes in the shapes of cervical cells as an indication of chromosomal problems that could lead to cervical cancer.

Read the article

Tips For Treating Viruses, Fungi, and Parasites

Click here for the full article by the American Academy of Pediatricians.

It is  good overview of types of treatment for these three types of diseaseses.