Results tagged “parasites” from 60 Second Science

I always used to pretend my Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was made of worms — it made dinner time twice as fun and drove my sister nuts. But the massive conglomerate Kraft Foods has taken my childhood clowning in the opposite direction: They're working on a food product that kills intestinal worms while being cheesy and delicious.

Kraft Foods hasn't announced what form the the food will take, but they confirmed that it contains deworming chemicals developed by TyraTech, a company that develops "safe pesticides." The chemicals are derived from plant oils, and though TyraTech's CEO wouldn't say which plants they came from, he compared the chemical's power to citronella oil's ability to repel mosquitos.

It won't be sold in the U.S., but instead will be marketed to rural Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where parasitic worms often "leave millions of children lethargic, dangerously anemic and, sometimes, passing blood."

The oils work by overstimulating three olfactory and central nervous system receptors present only in invertebrates; this overstimulation leads to wave after wave of unstoppable impulses, which eventually overwhelms the parasites and repels or kills them. Vertebrates lack these receptors and are safe from the effects.

Continue reading 'Kraft Mac n' Cheese — now with 100% more worm-killing power!' >

Today's 60 Second Science Podcast is brought to you by Woody Allen as an ant:

Parasitized Ants Get Berry Sick

Full transcript after the jump...

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What, you’ve never heard of an antberry?

While studying black ants in the Panamanian forest, a group of American biologists found a roundworm with a bizarre lifecycle. When an ant devours the parasite, its abdomen swells up and turns red, effectively giving the ant the appearance of a juicy red berry—and dinner, for a passing bird.

(Remember irrepressible Violet Beauregarde, that world champion gum chewer who swelled up to look like a giant blueberry in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Perhaps the problem with Mr. Wonka’s experimental three-course-meal gum was that it harbored some parasitic nematode…)

Birds don’t usually feast on the ants, but they love the berries. And when an ant looks like a berry, the researcher hypothesize, the bird eats the bug, and the parasite spreads to the bird. The researchers say this is the first example of "fruit mimicry" caused by a parasite.

The scientists, Robert Dudley, Stephen P. Yanoviak, and Michael E. Kaspari, were actually studying the aeronautical ability of ants in the tropical forest. But they kept finding ants with swollen, berry-like bellies, and soon, speculation about the berry bellies turned to beer:

Continue reading 'Weird World Report: Parasite makes ants look like berries' >

Fish populations are plummeting and, for once, it’s not a result of overfishing. In an important new paper in Nature, researchers show that parasitic sea lice from fish farms are causing wild salmon populations to collapse. The problem is so severe that there could be a 99 percent decline in certain wild salmon populations over the next four years, the scientists report.

Continue reading 'One Fish, Two Fish, Sea Lice, No Fish' >

Today's 60 Second Science Podcast is brought to you by the Larium crazies:

Malaria Parasites May Be Allies Against Drug Resistance

Full transcript after the jump...

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You may have heard of parasites that influence the behavior of their hosts, but seeing it happen is another brand of madness entirely. The juvenile nematomorph hairworm is a parasite in insects. They grow from a tiny cyst to a gigantic worm that inhabits most of the animal's cavity. They then induce their host to jump into the water, effectively committing suicide. Geesh.

Continue reading 'Parasitic worm causes host to commit suicide' >

Two cool “medical mystery” stories of note in the current issue of The Scientist show why “all natural” ingredients can often been “all deadly.”

One finds a nasty parasite in a popular fruit drink often touted as an anti-aging miracle; another unravels the cause of a mysterious, fatal kidney disease in Croatia, which seemed to selectively target certain unlucky families. I won’t spoil it here, but this story, too, has implications beyond the small pockets of affected people in that part of Europe.

If I've learned anything in my 56 years, it's that children are parasites — I'd know that even if I hadn't fathered dozens of illegitimate kids across the deep south. But science is finally catching up to what ol' Proud Papa here always knew: The placenta produces previously unknown hormones that possess the same molecules as some parasitic worms.

The puzzle as to why a pregnant woman's immune system doesn't attack the fetus and placenta - both of which contain genetic material from the father - may finally have been cracked.

It seems the placenta produces hitherto unknown hormones containing the same molecule some parasitic worms use to avoid detection by the immune system. As well as helping the fetus avoid immune attack, the hormones may also summon extra blood and nutrients to the aid of an undernourished fetus.

[Shudders] Yup, that's the miracle of life for ya...a beautiful thing in all its splendor.

Continue reading 'Fetuses escape rejection by mimicking parasites; nation's mothers sigh and say "tell me about it"' >