#sand flies

[dayminder786]

SAND FLIES?!?!

[bpod-bpod]

Plug and Parasitise

Responsible for leishmaniasis, a disease that can cause severe skin lesions or affect internal organs, Leishmania parasites use biting phlebotomine sand flies as vectors to move between hosts. To maximise transmission into a new victim, they produce a thick fluid, the promastigote secretory gel (PSG), which obstructs the flies’ digestive system. Looking inside an infected fly, using micro-computed tomography, reveals how the mass of parasites and PSG distends the midgut (in green, with ingested blood in red), and forces a valve, lying between the foregut and midgut, to open more widely. This makes it more difficult for flies to take in blood, causing them to feed for longer than usual when they next bite, and so increasing the chance of parasites being regurgitated. If infected flies do manage to get another meal, parasite numbers grow and the volume of the PSG plug increases, further boosting transmission during later bites.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Image from work by Martin JR Hall and colleagues

Natural History Museum, London, UK

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Pathogens, August 2021

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[bpod-bpod]

Internal Strife

Caused by parasites transmitted by biting phlebotomine sand flies, leishmaniasis is a widespread disease with several forms, either leading to severe skin complaints or seriously damaging organs, especially the spleen and liver. Upon infection, white blood cells called macrophages engulf the Leishmania parasites. Yet, rather than being destroyed, the parasites thrive, reproducing within the macrophages, inside compartments known as vacuoles (as shown, in a 3D reconstruction based on microscopy images, with a macrophage in white and parasites in red). Recent research suggests this process involves host V-ATPases, complex proteins which control vacuolar pH by shuttling protons across compartment membranes, alongside many other functions. One part of these proteins in particular, upregulated by infection with Leishmania parasites, appears to be important: without it, vacuoles are smaller and parasites become vulnerable to the immune system’s inflammatory response. Interfering with this protein domain could thus open up new possibilities for tackling intracellular parasites.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Image by Carina Carraro Pessoa and colleagues

Departamento de Microbiologia, Imunologia e Parasitologia, Escola Paulista de Medicina, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil

Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Pathogens, June 2019

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

[cashmerecorey]

fighting for MY LIFE rn omg beach flies do not give a fuck… tell me why I slapped this thing multiple times (didn’t move), blew on it (didn’t move), and frantically swatted my hat at it (kept coming at me) and it’s STILL BOTHERING ME. I can hear it. I think I’m safe and then *buzz buzz* right behind my ear or in my hat or in my scarf. ARGH

[theblessedbear]

Back to teh angery

[foxfinding]

There May Be Mozzies

In honour of Valentines Day, a piece of information: St. Valentine is also the patron saint of pestilence.

This is appropriate, because I look like I have the plague.

…I find myself longing for the Dettol sponge baths I used to take in Totara North.

(Though I maintain that mosquitoes are preferable to sand fleas. Because…I can *see* the blood coming out of my flesh when I’m bitten by a sand…

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[unoineedu]

[doide-su]

When you forget that they are called sand flies: the itchy man, the itchy monster, blood sucking fly thingy