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Parasite biology is the study of all biological aspects of parasites and parasitic diseases, including the structure, growth, development, genetics, ecology and evolution of these organisms.
Artemisinin-resistant Plasmodium falciparum can use tRNA modification reprogramming and codon bias translation as an epitranscriptomic response to survive artemisinin-induced stress.
Ribose-5-phosphate (R5P) is a precursor for nucleic acid biogenesis. Here, Guo and Ji et al. show that multiple routes can flexibly supply R5P to enable Toxoplasma gondii growth.
The African trypanosome Trypanosoma brucei has been shown to form stress granules in vitro that might be repurposed to enable differentiation and facilitate parasite transmission. Here, Cayla et al. show that differentiation between slender and stumpy forms does involve membrane-less granules that are different from nutritional stress granules.
Actin is critical to the survival of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. In this study, Hvorecny and Sladewski et al. show that T. gondii actin forms intrinsically dynamic filaments in vitro due to differences in assembly contacts in the D-loop.
This study reports the identification of an inhibitor of a Toxoplasma gondii myosin motor protein that could be exploited to prevent or treat infections with T. gondii and other apicomplexan parasites.
In this study, Brown et al. show that nutrient deprivation increases Plasmodium falciparum survival and tolerance to the antimalarial drug artemisinin.
A recent study finds that upregulation of nutrient-permeable channels in the parasitophorous vacuole membrane increases the acquisition of amino acids by artemisinin-resistant parasites to compensate for fitness costs.