Geneticists from Dartmouth Medical School (United States) explain in the latest issue of "Nature" how to make a common parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, lose its ability to cause disease. To "disarm" it, it is enough to deactivate a single enzyme, turning this potentially deadly microorganism into a harmless parasite.
The advance may lead to the development of better treatments and vaccines for toxoplasmosis and other parasitic diseases, such as malaria, the authors note.
They deactivated an enzyme, thus destroying the ability of Toxoplasma gondii to replicate and survive in the host organism, a strategy that could be applied in other infectious diseases.
The mutant version of the parasite was injected into mice, and they found that it was not only harmless but also protected the rodents against the normal parasite.
Toxoplasma gondii is usually spread in uncooked meat (sometimes also through cats), causing toxoplasmosis, a disease that generally does not endanger healthy people but can be life-threatening in immunosuppressed patients and cause serious birth defects in children. infected mothers.
