• Question: In regards to your work, what other organisms does the Toxoplasma gondii affect? and how?

    Asked by Jaspie to Clare on 10 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Clare Harding

      Clare Harding answered on 10 Nov 2014:


      Hello!

      Toxoplasma is amazingly good at infecting animals. We think it probably can infect every warm blooded animal on the planet.

      It cant do birds, probably because birds body temperature is 42 oC which is too hot for Toxo and we have never found it in reptiles or fish, probably mostly because of temperature but im not sure about that.

      As well as every animal, Toxoplasma appears to be able to infect every type of cell (except red blood cells) so it has an amazing ability to go wherever it wants. How it gets into cells is partly what my work in about, we thought we knew but it turns out that its much more complicated than we thought (this seams to happen a lot in science). Generally, it looks like Toxo has a powerful motor which can force its way into any cell it feels like, but we are still learning a lot!

Comments