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Updated: Jul 13, 2025

Tractable Mammalian Cell Infections with Protozoan-primed Bacteria
Published on: April 2, 2013
How colonization bottlenecks, tissue niches, and transmission strategies shape protozoan infections
Dana A May1, Fatima Taha2, Matthew A Child2
1Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Cancer Biology at the Carter Immunology Center, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA.
Abstract:
Protozoan pathogens such as Plasmodium spp., Leishmania spp., Toxoplasma gondii, and Trypanosoma spp. are often associated with high-mortality, acute and chronic diseases of global health concern. For transmission and immune evasion, protozoans have evolved diverse strategies to interact with a range of host tissue environments. These interactions are linked to disease pathology, yet our understanding of the association between parasite colonization and host homeostatic disruption is limited. Recently developed techniques for cellular barcoding have the potential to uncover the biology regulating parasite transmission, dissemination, and the stability of infection. Understanding bottlenecks to infection and the in vivo tissue niches that facilitate chronic infection and spread has the potential to reveal new aspects of parasite biology.
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