he administration of anti-trypanosome nitroderivatives curtails Trypanosoma cruzi infection in Chagas disease patients, but does not prevent destructive lesions in the heart. This observation suggests that an effective treatment for the disease requires understanding its pathogenesis. To understand the origin of clinical manifestations of the heart disease we used a chicken model system in which infection can be initiated in the egg, but parasite persistence is precluded. T. cruzi...

Background Intestinal parasitic nematodes such as hookworms, Ascaris lumbricoides, and Trichuris trichiura are amongst most prevalent tropical parasites in the world today. Although these parasites cause a tremendous disease burden, we have very few anthelmintic drugs with which to treat them. In the past three decades only one new anthelmintic, tribendimidine, has been developed and taken into human clinical trials. Studies show that tribendimidine is safe and has good clinical...

In the third part of this lecture, I will discuss current work from our laboratory on mechanisms used by the intracellular parasites Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania to interact with mammalian cells. In addition to clarifying specific molecular strategies used by these parasites to infect and survive within host cells, these studies also led, in some instances, to unexpected insights on novel pathways regulating mammalian cell function.

The size and coding capacity of a genome are its most fundamental properties. What selective pressures deter mine the expansion and contraction of genomes, and how is genome size related to adaptive strategies? Very small marine microbial genomes are providing new insights into these questions. The first reports of genome sequences from the cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus and the α-proteo bacterium SAR11 (Pelagibacter) established that these very abundant marine bacterioplankton clades have...

Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania are closely related intracellular protozoan parasites that cause serious diseases throughout the world. In the first part of this lecture, I will present background material on the biology of Trypanosoma cruzi and the history of its discovery as an important agent of human disease in Latin America. I will also discuss the main characteristics of the disease, and the current efforts to stop human transmission. For more information see:...