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Washington University School of Medicine
Deadly parasite's rare sexual dalliances may help scientists neutralize it
April 28th, 2009
For years, microbiologist Stephen Beverley, Ph.D., has tried to get the disease-causing parasite Leishmania in the mood for love. In this week's Science, he and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health report that they may have finally found the answer: Cram enough Leishmania into the gut of an insect known as the sand fly, and the parasite will have sex. Some strains of the parasite are deadly and kill hundreds of thousands of people annually in developing countries. Offspring of the parasite's dalliances may hold the genetic key to neutralizing it. The achievement could be an important step toward identifying the genes that determine the parasite's deadliest...
Source: TB & Outbreaks Week (2009-04-28)
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