Infectious disease: Parasite conundrum solved?
When it infects humans, some strains of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii go largely unnoticed, whereas others can kill. Researchers now think they know why.One strain of the parasite injects an enzyme into the host cell, which travels to the cell’s nucleus and dramatically alters the host’s gene expression. This can then alter the expression of proteins that are involved in the host’s response to infection. Some other strains of Toxoplasma do not possess this enzyme, which may explain why infections manifest disease in different ways, say Jeroen Saeij and colleagues in this week's Nature.The findings provide a new mechanism for the interaction between an intracellular eukaryotic pathogen and its host, and reveal major differences in how Toxoplasma lineages have evolved to exploit this interaction.
CONTACTJeroen Saeij (Stanford University, CA, USA)Tel: +1 650 723 7296; E-mail: jsaeij@stanford.edu mailto: jsaeij@stanford.edu