Parasitology articles within Nature

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  • News & Views |

    Malaria infections are not always lethal. One reason for this may be that transmission from mosquitoes creates malaria parasites that trigger a more protective mammalian immune response. See Letter p.228

    • Andrew F. Read
    •  & Nicole Mideo

  • Letter |

    This study reports the identification of adult stem cells in the human parasite Schistosoma mansoni (blood fluke); the cells proliferate and differentiate into derivatives of multiple germ layers, and their maintenance requires a fibroblast growth factor receptor orthologue.

    • James J. Collins III
    • , Bo Wang
    •  & Phillip A. Newmark

  • Comment |

    Joel V. Weinstock explains why several clinical trials are deliberately infecting people with helminths to treat autoimmune diseases.

    • Joel V. Weinstock

  • Outlook |

    • Michelle Grayson

  • Outlook |

    Nine experts give their opinion on the 'known unknowns' in malaria research.

    • Brendan S. Crabb
    • , James G. Beeson
    •  & Solomon Nwaka

  • Outlook |

    Worms? Stents? Bee stings? Patients with multiple sclerosis who exhaust conventional therapies are turning in desperation to unproven approaches.

    • Jennifer Berglund

  • Letter |

    The morphology of the oldest definitive fleas—from the Middle Jurassic and Early Cretaceous periods of China—suggests that they had ‘reptilian’ hosts before radiating to mammalian and avian hosts, and their stout and elongate sucking siphons suggest that they may be rooted among the scorpionflies of the Mesozoic era.

    • Diying Huang
    • , Michael S. Engel
    •  & André Nel

  • Letter |

    Five current human African trypanosomiasis drugs are used for genome-scale RNA interference target sequencing screens in Trypanosoma brucei, and reveal the transporters, organelles, enzymes and metabolic pathways that function to facilitate antitrypanosomal drug action.

    • Sam Alsford
    • , Sabine Eckert
    •  & David Horn

  • News & Views |

    The parasitic infection mucocutaneous leishmaniasis can vary in severity. It emerges that the levels of an RNA virus within the parasite affect both the host's immune response and the parasite's persistence.

    • Martin Olivier

  • Editorial |

    The public should be properly consulted ahead of any release of experimental insects. But what do they need to know, and whose job is it to ensure the message gets across?

  • News & Views |

    The transition by certain nematode worms to plant parasitism, and possibly more generally to herbivory, is illuminated by an investigation into how nematodes acquired the protein weapons to penetrate the plant cell wall.

    • Noah K. Whiteman
    •  & Andrew D. Gloss

  • Article |

    The evolutionary origin of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum has been much debated. Genetic analysis of a large number of faecal samples from wild-living African apes now shows that Plasmodium parasites from Western gorillas are most closely related to the human parasite. The data suggest that human P. falciparum evolved from a gorilla parasite after a single host transfer event.

    • Weimin Liu
    • , Yingying Li
    •  & Beatrice H. Hahn

  • Letter |

    A central hub of carbon metabolism is the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, which serves to connect the processes of glycolysis, gluconeogenesis, respiration, amino acid synthesis and other biosynthetic pathways. These authors show that TCA metabolism in the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is largely disconnected from glycolysis and is organized along a fundamentally different architecture — not cyclic, but branched — from the canonical textbook pathway.

    • Kellen L. Olszewski
    • , Michael W. Mather
    •  & Manuel Llinás

  • News & Views |

    One of the hallmarks of cellular biochemistry is the ability to extract energy efficiently from available substrates. The malaria parasite, however, deviates from the norm, and has come up with its own solution.

    • Hagai Ginsburg

  • Feature |

    It is 101 years since Carlos Chagas discovered the parasite responsible for the disease that now bears his name. What progress has been made since this discovery? Here Julie Clayton gives the low-down on Chagas disease.

    • Julie Clayton

  • Feature |

    The publishing of the first Trypanosoma cruzi genome sequence was hailed as “a huge intellectual triumph”, but what has it delivered?

    • Julie Clayton

  • News |

    Body-louse genome offers a glimpse into the genetic legacy of life as a permanent parasite.

    • Heidi Ledford

  • Letter |

    Toxoplasma gondii is an opportunistic human pathogen that secretes organelles called micronemes during infection. This is important for parasite motility, host-cell invasion and egress. It is now shown that the secretion of micronemes is dependent on the T. gondii calcium-dependent protein kinase 1. This kinase is not found in the parasite's mammalian hosts, and might represent a valid drug target.

    • Sebastian Lourido
    • , Joel Shuman
    •  & L. David Sibley

  • Article |

    Here, a library of more than 300,000 chemicals was screened for activity against Plasmodium falciparum growing in red blood cells. Of these chemicals, 172 representative candidates were profiled in detail; one exemplar compound showed efficacy in a mouse model of malaria. The findings provide the scientific community with new starting points for drug discovery.

    • W. Armand Guiguemde
    • , Anang A. Shelat
    •  & R. Kiplin Guy

  • Article |

    Here, nearly 2 million compounds from GlaxoSmithKline's chemical library were screened for inhibitors of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum, grown in red blood cells. Of these compounds, some 13,500 inhibited parasite growth, and more than 8,000 also showed potent activity against a multidrug resistant strain. The targets of these compounds were inferred through bioinformatic analysis, revealing several new mechanisms of antimalarial action.

    • Francisco-Javier Gamo
    • , Laura M. Sanz
    •  & Jose F. Garcia-Bustos

  • Letter |

    'Horizontal gene transfer' refers to the passage of genetic material between non-mating species. Transposable elements (transposons) may be especially prone to horizontal gene transfer, but the mechanisms by which they can spread across diverged species have been elusive. Here it is shown that transposons can spread by hitchhiking in the genomes of parasites. The amount of DNA that can be transferred in this way underscores the impact of horizontal gene transfer on genome evolution.

    • Clément Gilbert
    • , Sarah Schaack
    •  & Cédric Feschotte

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