• Question: why did you choose this specific parasite

    Asked by Karl Kadar to Clare on 18 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Clare Harding

      Clare Harding answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      My parasite (Toxoplasma gondii) is what we call a model organism. That means that its quite simple, easy to work with and we have lots of different tools to genetically modify it which means we can do lots of cool things, like make them glow or we can damage them in very specific ways and see what happens.

      Also, its very pretty to work with ( I have a picture on my profile so you can judge for yourself!) and it hurts a lot of people so there is a good reason to try to find out about it so we can make new drugs to attack it.

      So lots of reasons really!

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