National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Photo: Malaria Parasites Use "Cloaking Devices" to Trick Body


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A Plasmodium knowlesi malaria parasite (shown in blue) infects a red blood cell from a rhesus monkey.

The parasite's genes were sequenced in a new study, which revealed mechanisms allowing P. knowlesi to cloak itself from human and monkey immune systems.

Image by Anton Dluzewski, Mary Galinski, Esmeralda VS Meyer, Lawrence Bannister, Graham Mitchell, John Barnwell, Tony Holder.