Toxoplasma pic spam
Feb. 14th, 2006 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
momsalive1andien asked for a picture of Toxoplasma gondii. I got carried away and had way too much fun doing it. I may just do it again without anyone asking me to. With commentary for those of you who have not met this particular protozoan.
causes toxoplasmosis. A healthy immune system can usually get a hold of it, but it causes serious disease in immunosuppressed people and is a devastating congenital infection.
Pregnant people, those with AIDS or who otherwise have a compromised immune system are advised to be careful changing cat litter boxes to avoid picking up the oocysts. However, you can get infected in a variety of ways, as these show. Life cycles, as anyone who has taken parasitology will tell you, come in several types:
somewhat helpful,
inscrutable,
and frightening.
T. gondii infects intestinal linings in cats and travel out of the cat in oocysts. There are two individuals in there, two single-celled parasites. They never get to be more than a single cell, but they make different types of cells depending on the situation.
The individuals in the oocysts are sporozites. Their skill set includes surviving the outside world, weathering the trip through the hot acid pit of the mammalian stomach, and recognizing that they are in the small intestine, and that it is time to get out.
Sporozoites can infect cells in a slew of mammals. Once in, they reproduce by fission,
blow up the cell,
and go infect more cells. These are tachyzoites, individuals that can reproduces rapidly and efficiently.
They are safe from the immune system while they are in a cell, but have to run the gauntlet between them. The crescent shaped cell next to a red blood cell is a toxoplasma tachyzoite.
They burrow into cells using the enzymes (yellow in the second photo) they pack into their tips, maybe wiggling themselves in by movable fibers (green in the third photo). Those structures in the tip, the apical complex, is the key innovation in the phylyum Apicomplexa, like the exoskeleton of arthropods or the milk glands of mammals. You can make the argument that having it opens many opportunities for the group and explains why there are so many species.
If the immune system starts to cut into the spread of the tachyzoites, they reproduce as bradyzoites, which know how to make tissue cysts.
Cysts are common in the brain
and eyes.
The immune system can't get at the bradyzoites as long as they are in their cyst. On the other hand, they can't do much in there but wait to get out. So as long as the immune system is working pretty well, they are contained. Stress the immune system, they break open, and make more cysts.
In conclusion, take good care of your immune system and it will take good care of you.
causes toxoplasmosis. A healthy immune system can usually get a hold of it, but it causes serious disease in immunosuppressed people and is a devastating congenital infection.
Pregnant people, those with AIDS or who otherwise have a compromised immune system are advised to be careful changing cat litter boxes to avoid picking up the oocysts. However, you can get infected in a variety of ways, as these show. Life cycles, as anyone who has taken parasitology will tell you, come in several types:
somewhat helpful,
inscrutable,
and frightening.
T. gondii infects intestinal linings in cats and travel out of the cat in oocysts. There are two individuals in there, two single-celled parasites. They never get to be more than a single cell, but they make different types of cells depending on the situation.
The individuals in the oocysts are sporozites. Their skill set includes surviving the outside world, weathering the trip through the hot acid pit of the mammalian stomach, and recognizing that they are in the small intestine, and that it is time to get out.
Sporozoites can infect cells in a slew of mammals. Once in, they reproduce by fission,
blow up the cell,
and go infect more cells. These are tachyzoites, individuals that can reproduces rapidly and efficiently.
They are safe from the immune system while they are in a cell, but have to run the gauntlet between them. The crescent shaped cell next to a red blood cell is a toxoplasma tachyzoite.
They burrow into cells using the enzymes (yellow in the second photo) they pack into their tips, maybe wiggling themselves in by movable fibers (green in the third photo). Those structures in the tip, the apical complex, is the key innovation in the phylyum Apicomplexa, like the exoskeleton of arthropods or the milk glands of mammals. You can make the argument that having it opens many opportunities for the group and explains why there are so many species.
If the immune system starts to cut into the spread of the tachyzoites, they reproduce as bradyzoites, which know how to make tissue cysts.
Cysts are common in the brain
and eyes.
The immune system can't get at the bradyzoites as long as they are in their cyst. On the other hand, they can't do much in there but wait to get out. So as long as the immune system is working pretty well, they are contained. Stress the immune system, they break open, and make more cysts.
In conclusion, take good care of your immune system and it will take good care of you.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 05:26 am (UTC)"...seeing pictures of infectious disease... That totally makes my evening..."
That's sick.
**nods**
Look what I found - a Yersina plush doll!!
http://www.scienceartandmore.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1192
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 07:49 am (UTC)I'm a sick, sick person! Infectious disease rocks my world!
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 10:17 pm (UTC)Just asking -
;)
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-14 11:11 pm (UTC)Just got the all clear to give blood again - 20 years after the original infection.
And I beleive - with maybe no justification because it was 10 years after the initial infection, that toxoplasma was the cause of my miscarriage.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 05:55 am (UTC)You have famous blood! That is very cool.
"Just got the all clear to give blood again - 20 years after the original infection."
Twenty years! They must be convinced you got rid of them all. I am glad to hear you haven't had any other trouble with it.
I am very sorry to hear about your miscarriage. An awful thing to go through.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 12:23 am (UTC)I enjoyed reading that.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 12:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 05:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 08:37 am (UTC)I'd never mock another human being and certainly not you HUGE HUGS
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 08:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 09:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 12:15 pm (UTC)**is confused**
"..are so... well, pretty. Something that nasty, and it looks cool instead."
Every increment in improvement and innovation in imaging technology brings out another world of bizzare, intricate and beautiful organisims you need a microscope to see. And there is no end to them - the vast majority of microbes on the planet, it is safe to say, have never been seen. Far more interesting in that sense than animals.