April 9, 2016

Experience UCalgary 2016 or Join HPI, we work with these crazy parasites!

Article by Sonja Dunemann (PhD student, Wasmuth lab, UCalgary)

Experience UCalgary 2016
or Join HPI, we work with these crazy parasites!

On April 9, 2016 starting exactly at 2:05 pm, our mission could finally begin: the recruitment of top U of C applicants!

“Choose the University of Calgary for your studies–we are awesome!” that was our message.

 An overview of the program was given by Dr. John Gilleard, HPI Executive Member, Professor and Associate Dean (Research), Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. He impressed the attendees with facts about parasites and why research in this area is still so important – every 5th person is infected with a parasite, and we lose billions of dollars in agriculture due to infected crops and cattle. 

Of course, HPI outreach would not be the same without our “Who works with the coolest parasite” battle. Dicrocoelium dendriticum, our previous winning parasite, was presented by Dave Curran, and we also had a newcomer: Leishmania, presented by Leah Hohman. The third talk unfortunately had to be canceled (was the speaker actually infected by a parasite?)

The battle began. Dave spoke first, introducing the organism that turns ants into zombies. First of all: how does an ant get infected? You'll never guess: it actually needs to feed on slime balls that were coughed up by snails. But wait – how did the snail get infected? Well, it actually had to feed on a ruminant’s excrements. Gross, eh? But wait – how did the ruminant get infected? It had to eat an infected ant!  But wait - since when do ruminants feed on ants?  It takes one parasite that reaches the ant’s head to take over control and make the ant crunch its mandibles into the top of a blade of grass after sunset, waiting to get eaten by a ruminant. And in the daylight, the parasites retreat, and let the ant take back control.

Next was Leah's turn, representing one of the nastiest parasites to humans: a parasite that eats your skin, preferably the face – maybe the cheek, or even the whole tip of the nose? It gets worse: some species of Leishmania can not only ruin your looks, but the visceral form of Leishmaniasis can be deadly. How do we get infected? Never rest calmly again in tropical areas, because the sandfly will not be far. One bite – and you could die. So Leah, I agree: there are good reasons to live in Canada!

The run was close, the decision hard–which parasite is actually the coolest? We needed two rounds of audience applause to decide. In the end, our zombie-ant parasite won again! Our champion!

The third and last point of our program: the display of parasites! We presented different parasites to engage attendees and their families, give astonishing facts about parasites, and, of course, to gross them out. The parasite samples included, among others, Leishmania, Giardia, and Toxoplasma, which is probably the world's most successful parasite.

After one hour of parasite stories, the HPI part of Experience UCalgary was over, and we had some time for pictures!

All-in-all, it was a nice opportunity to engage in HPI and UCalgary outreach. Thank you Leah for doing a great job organizing this event - we all had a lot of fun talking about our favorite parasites.

Thanks to all HPI volunteers: Dr. John Gillard (HPI Faculty member, program introduction), Leah Hohman (HPI TOC Community Engagement Co-lead, talk), David Curran (Talk), Matheus Carneiro, Murilo Bichuette, Shruti Srivastava, Russell Avramenko, Edina Szabo (Photos)