Where passion for animals, science, and medicine lives…
Pliny the Elder’s beliefs on ticks Since people have looked out at their natural world, they have sought to classify and understand all life, including ticks. Pliny the Elder wrote the first natural history text around 79 AD. He noticed ticks preferred some species of mammal over others. Pliny witnessed ticks feed, massively expand, release […]
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Omnivorous opossums creep quietly through the night, in search of a meal of just about anything. Many benefits come from having opossums for neighbors, including insect, tick and rodent control. If you are a horse owner, opossums can be your worst enemy. Leading a scavenging lifestyle lends itself to picking up a few parasites here […]
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If you are outside of the medical field, the term half-life may conjure thoughts of radioactivity or carbon dating. Within the medical field, half-life tells us the time that the body must have to remove half of the drug. For many long-term medications, doctors need to establish an equilibrium level of drugs – a plateau […]
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What do skinny cows, armadillos, elephants and coughing humans have in common? Turns out, they all play host to a very malicious genus of bacteria. All of these are zoonotic, chronic infections, with few effective treatment options.
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Spring Break has passed, and it’s time to hit the books again. In just 10 rapidly approaching weeks, all your hard work will be put to use. Now is also a good time to check in with your mentor for any additional helpful hints, or just moral support.
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Which are you? Are you right or left-handed? What about your DNA? That’s right, your DNA has handedness or what chemists call chirality. Unlike human populations which has a mix of right and left-handedness, all DNA, and most molecules made in nature do not present as mixtures. Understanding chirality explains essential aspects of both drugs […]
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First described in Missouri in 1970, Cytauxzoon felis is a tick-transmitted protozoan within the family Theileriidae. Bobcats and recovered domestic cats act as reservoir hosts for Amblyomma americanum (Lone Star tick). As with other vector-borne diseases, a tick ingests the parasite from an infected host and transmits it to a naive host at the next […]
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The kissing bug evokes thoughts of Valentine’s Day, young love, chocolate, and chagomas. The last would not be something you want to receive from your true love. Chagomas occur from infection with Trypanosoma cruzi, spread by kissing bugs.
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A bat lives as a small, unassuming creature. Most people fear them, and rightly so. Bats are known vectors of rabies. But, they should be thought of as protectors of humans. Bats silently guard us nightly from diseases such as West Nile, Zika, chikungunya, and dengue fever. For example, the little brown bat can eat […]
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