Elucidating the molecular mechanisms of parasite-host interactions between snails and schistosomes

The parasitic disease Schistosomiasis affects 243 million people worldwide. Having hatched from human urine or faeces contaminating water-bodies, the parasite must seek and infect a compatible water snail before developing further to infect humans. Recent research conducted at Brunel has identified an attractant released by snails that is used by the parasite to find and infect the snail intermediate host.

Now that we have isolated the attractant released by snails into the water that schistosomes use to find and infect snails, we
propose to investigate the genes and synthetic pathways relevant to snail schistosome attraction using genomic approaches. It is hoped that this fundamental information will help in the development of novel intervention strategies for disease transmission.

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This is a self funded topic

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