Activity: Talk or presentation types › Invited talk
Description
Obligate intracellular parasites have taken an evolutionary journey towards loss of integral functions that can be supplemented by metabolic “theft” from their host. I will outline how one group of parasites nearly lost their mitochondrial powerhouse to yield a reduced organelle that now carries out a residual but essential function. Associated with these changes in energy supply the parasites express proteins engaged in manipulating their host’s metabolism and organelles to their advantage. Structural cell biology at the EM level has been a key tool in discovery of these parasitic specializations and I will describe our approach and the results that continue to uncover new paradigms in our understanding of host parasite interactions.