Biologists shed light on a puzzling parasite
Toxoplasma gondii, a parasite that infects about one-third of the world’s population, comes in several strains. Some can have severe consequences such as encephalitis, while others produce no noticeable symptoms. Jeroen Saeij, an MIT biologist who has been studying Toxoplasma for several years, is trying to figure out the root of that discrepancy. In his latest work, he found that two of the three most common strains of Toxoplasma produce a protein that actually suppresses inflammation in the infected host — a discovery that could help researchers develop new ways to shut off inflammation in patients infected with the more threatening strains of Toxoplasma, or even in people with other inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s disease. “There’s a lot of these inflammatory diseases, and if there’s a general pathway that’s really good at quelling inflammation, there might be [drug] applications,” says Saeij, an assistant professor of biology.Saeij and his colleagues...