Parsing Parasites There Are Certain

Parsing Parasites

There are certain 'parasites' that cause numerous deadly diseases and some of these diseases can prove to be fatal to human beings. For example, the deadly Chagas' disease, African sleeping sickness, and the leishmaniasis are all caused by mere parasites. It is an amazing fact that these diseases are transmitted by certain common bloodsucking insects such as the tsetse fly and the 'kissing bug' found in tropical and sub-tropical populations, and these diseases alone are held responsible for the deaths of more than 125,000 people every single year, and the worst part is that the patient becomes so very badly disfigured that he becomes ostracized form the rest of society for his entire remaining lifetime. Blood banks are also compromised because of this disease. (Parsing Parasites: genomes of three tropical parasites are sequenced) Research is being conducted today at a serious level, on the DNA sequences of these deadly parasites, and the findings may help to better handle the fight against these diseases caused by parasites.

As a matter of fact, some findings were released recently, and these stated the DNA sequencing of the three parasites 'Trypanosoma cruzi, 'T. brucei' and 'Leishmania major'. These three parasites are collectively referred to as the 'Tritryps', and there is neither any vaccine available against them, nor does there exist any suitable treatment for the diseases caused by them. The medicines that are available today as a part of the treatment for the patient afflicted with the disease are generally quite toxic and extremely difficult to administer, and more often than not, according to a report by the World Health Organization, it will not be successful. The older treatments, dating back to the 1940's, were based on arsenic and antimony, and today, there are different methods, but with extremely limited efficiency. (Parsing Parasites: genomes of three tropical parasites are sequenced)

Geneticists today have discovered many thousands of mutations that are responsible for various diseases in human beings, and among these the so called 'founder mutations' stand apart. The reason for this is that many victims of genetic diseases die before they have a chance to reproduce and thus spread the disease to the next generation, but the sad fact is that n many cases, the founder mutations quite often spare the actual carrier of the disease and pass on to the next generation, and many disorders may result form these mutations. (Founder Mutations)

According to Najib el Sayed, a parasitologist at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville MD, disease causing parasites are in general 'neglected' parasites that affect impoverished populations of the world more than the affluent. (Parsing Parasites: genomes of three tropical parasites are sequenced) If the DNA sequence were to be discovered, then the treatment for diseases caused by such neglected parasites as explained above would become much easier, and more numbers of impoverished people of underdeveloped countries may be saved. The article on "Parsing Parasites" by Kaspar Mossman talks exactly about this issue, and the information that is available today. The article shows that this type of scientific investigation and research is very important, especially in light of today's world, where globalization is taking place at a rapid rate, and people are inter-mingling with each other as never before. If such relevant information about parasites and their DNA sequences were to be distributed to the public, then it would prove to be extremely beneficial to common man in his desperate fight against the various deadly diseases of today.

This is why when the L major was to be sequenced; the concerned scientists used the 'shotgun' method, whereby the DNA from each chromosome was chopped into small bits, and all the resulting fragments were sequenced separately. Afterwards, all the separate segments would be assembled into the entire chromosome like a giant jigsaw puzzle. For the T. bruci, scientists were able to sequence the DNA by using a combination of the shotgun method and the 'chromosome walking' method, whereby lengthier bits of the DNA were stitched together, starting from the middle of the chromosome, outwards. The DNA of T. cruzi, the agent of Chagas' disease, was however very difficult to decode, due to a variety of reasons. The first reason was that scientists did not know exactly how many chromosomes T. cruzi did have; this made them use the whole genome shotgun strategy for sequencing of its DNA. (Parsing Parasites: genomes of three tropical parasites are sequenced) What has been achieved by these scientists is of great consequence for the people of the world, because there is a newer and better prospects for the development of medicines and drugs which may be suitable for the treatment of patients afflicted with any of these deadly disease caused by parasites.

George Cross, the Head of the Molecular Parasitology Department at the Rockefeller University, states that these DNA sequences, released recently, are so very different from those of human beings, that it would be a matter of ease to discover suitable drugs to fight them with, and this is indeed excellent good news for the thousands of sufferers of such diseases, all over the world. An important fact to remember is that the tritryps need nutrients from their hosts, without which they cannot survive, being parasites. This means that they cannot manufacture sialic acid, which is the sugar that these parasites need in order to develop the complex surface molecules that they make so that they can escape the human immune response. (Parsing Parasites: genomes of three tropical parasites are sequenced) This bit of information was made evident only because the scientists were able to discover the DNA sequencing of these parasites, and in addition, it will be based on this information that scientists will be able to, in the future, devise suitable dugs which would be able to effectively block pathways such as the sialic acid uptake, and then kill the parasites.

If I were an impoverished citizen of the world, living in extremely dire circumstances, then I would most definitely like to see an end to the diseases that are rampant among my people, and the fact that research is being conducted that would effectively find a treatment and a cure for the deadly diseases that threaten my very existence gives me a great surge of hope, and I feel that pharmaceutical companies must take more interest in developing drugs that would fight deadly parasitic diseases. Although it is a fact that work has indeed been started in this regard and scientists have indeed been able to make a great breakthrough in being able to decipher the DNA sequencing of certain deadly parasites, it must be said that there is a lot of work yet to be done, before therapies and novel treatments can be developed which would be of use to the common man who may become afflicted with such killer diseases at any point of his life.