Blastocystis in vitro and in vivo investigations
Objectives
- To analyse and consistently characterise previously published or newly acquired microbiome data obtained from human volunteers, both healthy and with intestinal symptoms, harbouring Blastocystis
- To perform the same analyses in animals in order to compare the microbial residents of their microbiome with humans, but also to investigate if there are any associated microbes that are transmitted along with Blastocystis
- To bring together experts of in vivo and in vitro culturomics of Blastocystis to put together protocols to culture all the subtypes, both xenically and axenically to investigate the role of these microorganism within the host and the microbiome
- To generate and analyse metabolomic data from the established cultures in the previous objective and compare these results with the omics data generated from WG3
Team Leaders
Katerina Jirku (Pomajbikova)
Position: MC Member; leader of Working Group 4
Affiliation: Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Parasitology, Branišovská 31, 370 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic
Research interests: Medical and veterinary parasitology. Role of intestinal eukaryotes in human health. Epidemiology of intestinal protists in gut-healthy humans.
Raul Y. Tito Tadeo
Position: Co-Lead WG4
Affiliation: KU Leuven – Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Transplantation, VIB – Center for Microbiology
Research interests: Human gut microbiomes (multi-domain) focused on neglected populations (macro and micro levels)
Daisy Shaw
Position: WG4 ECR Lead
Affiliation: Laboratory of Evolutionary and Molecular Parasitology, RAPID group, University of Kent, UK
Research Interest: Blastocystis, gut microbiome, host-parasite interactions, health and disease
Evren Tileklioglu
Position: WG4 ECR Lead
Affiliation: Aydin Adnan Menderes University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Parasitology, Aydin, Türkiye
Research Interest: Medical parasitology, Blastocystis, Antiparasitic activity, Diagnosis, epidemiology, prevention, and control of parasitic diseases
Zuzana Pavlíčková
Position: WG4 ECR Lead
Affiliation: Institute of Parasitology, Biology Centre CAS, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic
Research Interest: Blastocystis, micro-eukaryotes, gut microbiome, epidemiology, experimental parasitology
Elisa Piperni
Position: WG4 ECR Lead
Affiliation: IEO, Istituto Europeo di Oncologia IRCSS, Milan, Italy
Department CIBIO, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
Research Interest: Gut microbiome, metagenomics, diet-microbiome-health axis, micro-eukaryotes, healthy aging