Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases
University of Georgia
The ability of organisms to replace and regenerate anatomical structures following their loss or damage has piqued the curiosity of biologists for centuries. In addition to Development’s ‘Model systems for regeneration’ collection, which introduced some of the most well-studied model organisms in the field, we published a Perspective in 2024 highlighting some of the …
Malaria, caused by Plasmodium falciparum, remains a major global health challenge, with an estimated 263 million new infections and 597,000 deaths annually. Increasing resistance to current antimalarial drugs underscores the urgent need for new therapeutics that target novel pathways in the parasite. We previously reported a novel class of β-carboline antimalarials, exemplified by PRC1584, which demonstrated …
Cryptosporidium is a globally endemic parasite genus with over 40 recognized species. While C. hominis and C. parvum are responsible for most human infections, human cases involving other species have also been reported. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence of simultaneous infections with multiple species. Therefore, we devised a new means to identify various species of Cryptosporidium in mixed infections by sequencing …
Many types of viruses have been identified in parasitoid wasps and other Hymenoptera. Parasitoid wasps also transmit several viruses to hosts through the piercing ovipositors that females use to lay eggs. Most viruses that are known to be transmitted by parasitoids have large double-stranded DNA genomes. We summarize the range of interactions that have evolved …
Competence to regenerate lost tissues varies widely across species. The rat tapeworm, Hymenolepis diminuta, undergoes continual cycles of shedding and regenerating thousands of reproductive segments to propagate the species. Despite its prowess, H. diminuta can only regenerate posteriorly from a singular tissue: the neck or germinative region (GR). What cells and signaling pathways restrict regeneration …
Background: The mosquito family Culicidae diverged into the subfamilies Anophelinae and Culicinae approximately 179 million years ago. Most female mosquitoes are anautogenous and must blood-feed on a vertebrate to produce eggs. Regulation of egg-producing gonotrophic cycles is best understood in the culicine Aedes aegypti. Anopheline mosquitoes encode all of the hormones that regulate gonotrophic cycles in …
Many, but not all, parasitic filarial nematodes (Onchocercidae) carry intracellular, maternally-transmitted, alphaproteobacterial Wolbachia symbionts. The association between filarial nematodes and Wolbachia is often portrayed as mutualist, where the nematode is reliant on Wolbachia for an essential but unknown service. Wolbachia are targets for anti-filarial chemotherapeutic interventions for human disease. Wolbachia of Onchocercidae derive from four …
Buprenorphine is an opioid used for pain management in veterinary medicine but which requires frequent dosing to maintain therapeutic levels. Sustained-release buprenorphine (BSR) formulations can overcome this limitation, but genera- or species-specific studies that determine the time profiles of buprenorphine after dosing are sparse for NHPs. The objective of this study was to determine the …
Hemocytes mediate defense responses that are collectively referred to as cellular immunity. Here I highlight recent progress in the study of hemocyte ontogeny and function. Studies conducted primarily in D. melanogaster, mosquitoes and Lepidoptera identify a number of transcription factors and signaling pathways that regulate hemocyte differentiation and proliferation. Recent single cell RNA sequencing studies …
Toxoplasma gondii is a highly successful intracellular mammalian and avian pathogen that must adapt to a wide range of intracellular and extracellular environments. A mechanism that may support this is the modification of hydroxyamino acid rich sequences of nucleocytoplasmic proteins with O-fucose. O-fucosylation of possibly hundreds of proteins is mediated by a single highly …