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Parasite immunity: introduction and Plasmodium

Part 1 of 2
Published on August 31, 2022   35 min

Other Talks in the Series: The Immune System - Key Concepts and Questions

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0:00
Hello, my name is Catherine Gadelha. I'm a reader in Molecular Cell Biology at the University of Nottingham. My research topic is host-parasite interactions, with a particular focus on the cell surface receptors and ligands that enable these interactions. In this lecture on parasite immunity, which is divided into two parts, I plan to cover four areas. First, I will give a brief overview of scales across parasites and why size matters. Then I will discuss the immunity to three major parasitic diseases of humans. Malaria, leishmaniasis and schistosomiasis.
0:48
Taking you on a quick journey through size and scale, which are really important in biological systems.
0:57
I will start at the metre scale and the parasite I will use to exemplify this scale is the cestode Taenia solium, or pork tapeworm, which can grow up to three metres long. Moving down the scale an order of magnitude and fitting the next slide to this square here at the bottom right corner.
1:23
I'm moving from the metre scale to ten centimetres. We have, for example, the nematode Ascaris lumbricoides or round worm. This can grow up to 25 centimetres, 10 times smaller than the previous cestode, but still very large.

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Parasite immunity: introduction and Plasmodium

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