Question: what is it about parasites that interest you so much?

Clare Harding answered on 10 Nov 2014:

First, I think that they are beautiful, I put some pictures I took on my profile so you can see what you think.

But its what these parasites can do that makes them so interesting to me, they get into human cells and then completely take them over. They inject proteins into the cell which changes the cell and makes it do what the parasite wants.

And when its in a mouse, the parasite gets into the mouses brain and changes how the mouse thinks. It makes the mouse not scared of cats so cats eat the mouse (and the parasites!) which is exactly what Toxoplasma wants, it quite happily lives in the cat and makes lots of eggs which go and infect other mice. We still don’t know exactly how it works but i find it amazing!