Donna Huber, Author at Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases

Cryopreservation of Plasmodium Sporozoites

Donna Huber on December 7, 2022

Cryopreservation protocol for Plasmodium sporozoites. Malaria is a deadly disease caused by the parasite, Plasmodium, and impacts the lives of millions of people around the world. Following inoculation into mammalian hosts by infected mosquitoes, the sporozoite stage of Plasmodium undergoes obligate development in the liver before infecting erythrocytes and causing clinical malaria. The most promising vaccine candidates for …

Integrative genetic manipulation of Plasmodium cynomolgi reveals MultiDrug Resistance-1 Y976F associated with increased in vitro susceptibility to mefloquine

Donna Huber on December 7, 2022

The lack of a long-term in vitro culture method has severely restricted the study of Plasmodium vivax, in part because it limits genetic manipulation and reverse genetics. We used the recently optimized P. cynomolgi Berok in vitro culture model to investigate the putative P. vivax drug resistance marker MDR1 Y976F. Introduction of this mutation using …

An aphid symbiont confers protection against a specialized RNA virus, another increases vulnerability to the same pathogen

Donna Huber on December 2, 2022

Insects often harbor heritable symbionts that provide defense against specialized natural enemies, yet little is known about symbiont protection when hosts face simultaneous threats. In pea aphids (Acyrthosiphon pisum), the facultative endosymbiont Hamiltonella defensa confers protection against the parasitoid, Aphidius ervi, and Regiella insecticola protects against aphid-specific fungal pathogens, including Pandora neoaphidis. Here we investigated …

Jessica Kissinger is special guest on podcast

Donna Huber on November 28, 2022

Jessica Kissinger was recently the guest researcher on the podcast Talking Biotech with Dr. Kevin Folta. Show notes: Parasites are known contributors to human disease and suffering, spanning a wide range of organisms. Dr. Jessie Kissinger from the University of Georgia has spent the last two decades curating genomic data from hundreds of parasites, their …

MaHPIC malaria systems biology data from Plasmodium cynomolgi sporozoite longitudinal infections in macaques

Donna Huber on November 24, 2022

Plasmodium cynomolgi causes zoonotic malarial infections in Southeast Asia and this parasite species is important as a model for Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium ovale. Each of these species produces hypnozoites in the liver, which can cause relapsing infections in the blood. Here we present methods and data generated from iterative longitudinal systems biology infection experiments …

New Confocal Microscope at the Biomedical Microscopy Core

Donna Huber on November 16, 2022

The University of Georgia’s Biomedical Microscopy Core has recently acquired a Zeiss LSM 980 confocal microscope with Airyscan2 and Multiplex Mode for confocal and super-resolution imaging. This new state-of-art microscope is capable of fast, gentle, and simultaneous imaging of live and fixed samples with up to 5 colors (Blue, green, Red, Far-Red & NIR), and …

Avoiding clinical trial failures in neglected tropical diseases: The example of Chagas disease

Donna Huber on November 14, 2022

Human clinical trials are expensive, and when they fail, they create the impression that a problem is intractable, thus depressing interest in future attempts. For neglected tropical diseases, where there are likely limited numbers of "shots on goal", such failures need to be assiduously avoided. Chagas disease drug discovery efforts have experienced more than its …

Evaluation of delayed LNFPIII treatment initiation protocol on improving long-term behavioral and neuroinflammatory pathology in a mouse model of Gulf War Illness

Donna Huber on November 8, 2022

Chemical overexposures and war-related stress during the 1990-1991 Gulf War (GW) are implicated in the persisting pathological symptoms that many GW veterans continue to endure. These symptoms culminate into a disease known as Gulf War Illness (GWI) and affect about a third of the GW veteran population. Currently, comprehensive effective GWI treatment options are unavailable. …

Gastrointestinal helminths increase Bordetella bronchiseptica shedding and host variation in supershedding

Donna Huber on November 8, 2022

Co-infected hosts, individuals that carry more than one infectious agent at any one time, have been suggested to facilitate pathogen transmission, including the emergence of supershedding events. However, how the host immune response mediates the interactions between co-infecting pathogens and how these affect the dynamics of shedding remains largely unclear. We used laboratory experiments and …

Cephalotane-type C20 diterpenoids from Cephalotaxus fortunei var. alpina

Donna Huber on November 4, 2022

Seventeen new cephalotane-type diterpenoids, fortalides A-Q (1-17), along with five known analogues, were isolated from the seeds of Cephalotaxus fortunei var. alpina. Their structures were determined by extensive spectroscopic methods, as well as electronic circular dichroism (ECD) and X-ray crystallographic data analyses. Some isolates exhibited unusual structural features that were first found in cephalotane-type diterpenoids, such as the …

Author: Donna Huber