Main description:

This volume covers the most important parasitic protists that are known to infect humans. The pathogens discussed cause diseases like toxoplasmosis, malaria, cryptosporidiosis, leishmaniasis, amoebiasis, trichomoniasis, and giardiasis. Readers from microbiology will appreciate the special focus on protist cell biology. As demonstrated in several of the chapters, these parasites are characterized by peculiar structures and organelles that cannot be found in mammalian cells - even though both are eukaryotic.

The book employs light and electron microscopy to display the changing morphology in various stages of parasitic development. In turn, the results are supplemented by transcriptome and proteome profiles that help to describe how these changes take place on a molecular level. Both researchers and clinicians from tropical medicine will find essential and practically applicable background information on these increasingly important pathogens.

Contents:

Life Cycle of Pathogenic Protists: Trypanosoma Cruzi.- Progress in Research on African Trypanosomes: Highlights from an Exceptional Decade.- Leishmania and Their Vertebrate Host Cells.- The Actual Knowledge of the Biology of the Leishmania-Sandfly Vector Interaction.- Plasmodium: Vertebrate Host.- Cellular and Molecular Interactions of Plasmodium with Mosquito Vectors.- Cryptosporidium.- Toxoplasma Gondii: Asexual Cycle in the Intermediate Host.- Toxoplasma Gondii: Detailed Description of the Coccidian (Asexual and Sexual) Development and Oocyst Sporulation.- Entamoeba Histolytica and Entamoeba Dispar.- Cell Biology of the Life Cycle of Giardia Intestinalis.- Trichomonas Vaginalis: Lifestyle, Cellular Biology, and Molecular Mechanisms of Pathogenesis.