[HN Gopher] 'Off switch' discovery could help clear our brains o...
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'Off switch' discovery could help clear our brains of a common
parasite
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/msphere.00438-25
Author : amichail
Score : 23 points
Date : 2025-12-27 20:28 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| Aurornis wrote:
| The "off switch" is a protein within the parasite that they
| turned off with genetic modifications. They didn't actually find
| a treatment that could be used on wild parasites.
|
| > Gaji and his team might have found a lead, though: in a new
| study, they have shown that switching off just a single protein
| inside the microscopic parasite can kill it.
|
| > The protein, TgAP2X-7, appears to be essential to the
| parasite's ability to invade a host, form plaques, and self-
| replicate. To prove this, the team genetically modified some
| parasites so that their TgAP2X-7 proteins function normally
| unless auxin (a plant hormone that regulates growth) is added, in
| which case the proteins would quickly degrade.
|
| So it could be helpful research for something, but there are a
| lot of proteins within parasites that are necessary for growth
| and survival. Turning any number of proteins off could end the
| parasite's ability to do something, but that's not helpful unless
| you also have a mechanism to induce that change without harming
| the host.
| chasil wrote:
| Toxoplasma Gondii is noted for causing behavioral differences in
| infected hosts.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#Behavioral_d...
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