This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: A protein discovered in a Virginia Tech–led study may open a gateway to treatments for a parasite responsible for a deadly disease in immunocompromised people. The team led by Raj Gaji, assistant professor of parasitology at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine working in the Center for One Health Research, identified a protein the team named DDP that helps Toxoplasma gondii build its offspring.
When researchers switched it off, the parasites stopped multiplying entirely. Because cells elsewhere throughout the human body do not contain the protein, DDP offers a promising target for drugs that could attack the parasite while leaving the patient's own cells alone. The study is published in mBio.
"This is the first time this protein has been identified," said Gaji, who worked with collaborators across Virginia Tech and one at Johns Hopkins in the study. "And we now have a clue about what its function could be." About one-third of the world's human population carries the parasite, most without knowing it. It completes the sexual phase of its life cycle in cats, and people typically become infected by eating undercooked meat from infected animals or consuming food or water contaminated with cat feces.
It can also pass from mother to child during pregnancy. In healthy people, the parasite lies dormant in the brain for life. When immunity falters, such as in people living with HIV or organ transplant patients taking immunosuppressive drugs, it can reawaken and multiply.
Drugs for the acute infection are toxic, and no drug can touch the dormant form. The parasite belongs to the same family as Neospora caninum, which can cause neurological disease in dogs and spontaneous abortions in cattle. When the team inserted the Neospora version of DDP into Toxoplasma, it performed the same job, suggesting that a single approach could work against multiple parasites affecting both people and animals.
DDP stands for DIX-DnaJ domain-containing protein, named for the two molecular building blocks it combines. Human cells contain proteins with one building block or the other, but never both together. The pairing appears only in Toxoplasma's parasite family and a few related microorganisms.
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