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.
Kevin Tan
Position:Co-Lead WG4
Affiliation: National University of Singapore
Research interests: Parasitology, host-parasite interactions, bioimaging, cell biology, drug studies, microbiome, Blastocystis, malaria