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Encephalitozoonosis
Encephalitozoonosis is a parasitic disease caused by the protozoan ''Encephalitozoon cuniculi'', which mainly affects rabbits in Europe. Other Strain (biology), strains of the pathogen cause disease in Murinae, Old World mice and Canidae, canines. Encephalitozoonosis occurs mainly in immunocompromised animals and is a potential zoonosis. Although very rare, it can also occur in immunocompromised humans. Wright and Craighead first described the disease in 1922. The pathogen primarily affects the kidneys and brain, causing Neurological disorder, neurological disorders. The most common symptom is a tilted head. Fenbendazole, an antiparasitic drug, can be used to combat the pathogen and prevent new infections. If clinical symptoms occur, treatment must be extended by administering antibiotics and supportive measures. The prospects of recovery are uncertain. Pathogen and occurrence ''Encephalitozoon cuniculi'' is a microsporidian protozoan that is an obligate intracellular parasite. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Encephalitozoon Cuniculi
''Encephalitozoon cuniculi'' (''E. cuniculi'') is a mammalian microsporidial pathogen with world-wide distribution. An important cause of neurologic and renal disease in rabbits, ''E. cuniculi'' can also cause disease in immunocompromised people. Classification and cell structure ''E. cuniculi'' is a spore-forming unicellular parasite belonging to the phylum Microsporidia. Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasitic fungi infecting many animal groups. Lacking mitochondria and peroxysomes, these unicellular eukaryotes were first considered a deeply branching protist lineage that diverged before the endosymbiotic event that led to mitochondria. The discovery of a gene for a mitochondrial-type chaperone combined with molecular phylogenetic data later implied that microsporidia are atypical fungi that lost mitochondria during evolution. Genome The genome consists of approximately 2.9-megabases (Mbs) in 11 chromosomes, with a total of 1,997 potential protein-coding genes. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protozoa
Protozoa (singular: protozoan or protozoon; alternative plural: protozoans) are a group of single-celled eukaryotes, either free-living or parasitic, that feed on organic matter such as other microorganisms or organic tissues and debris. Historically, protozoans were regarded as "one-celled animals", because they often possess animal-like behaviours, such as motility and predation, and lack a cell wall, as found in plants and many algae. When first introduced by Georg Goldfuss (originally spelled Goldfuß) in 1818, the taxon Protozoa was erected as a class within the Animalia, with the word 'protozoa' meaning "first animals". In later classification schemes it was elevated to a variety of higher ranks, including phylum, subkingdom and kingdom, and sometimes included within Protoctista or Protista. The approach of classifying Protozoa within the context of Animalia was widespread in the 19th and early 20th century, but not universal. By the 1970s, it became usual to require ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Domestic Rabbit
A domestic or domesticated rabbit (''Oryctolagus cuniculus domesticus'')—more commonly known as a pet rabbit, bunny, bun, or bunny rabbit—is a subspecies of European rabbit, a member of the lagomorph family. A male rabbit is known as a ''buck,'' a female is a ''doe,'' and a young rabbit is a ''kit'', or ''kitten''. Rabbits were first used for their food and fur by the Romans, and have been kept as pets in Western nations since the 19th century. Rabbits can be housed in exercise pens, but free roaming without any boundaries in a rabbit-proofed space has become popularized on social media in recent years. Beginning in the 1980s, the idea of the domestic rabbit as a house companion, a so-called ''house rabbit'' similar to a house cat, was promoted. Rabbits can be litter box-trained and taught to come when called, but they require exercise and can damage a house that has not been "rabbit proofed" based on their innate need to chew. Accidental interactions between pet rab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antibody
An antibody (Ab), also known as an immunoglobulin (Ig), is a large, Y-shaped protein used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as pathogenic bacteria and Viral disease, viruses. The antibody recognizes a unique molecule of the pathogen, called an antigen. Each tip of the "Y" of an antibody contains a paratope (analogous to a lock) that is specific for one particular epitope (analogous to a key) on an antigen, allowing these two structures to bind together with precision. Using this binding mechanism, an antibody can ''tag'' a microbe or an infected cell for attack by other parts of the immune system, or can neutralize it directly (for example, by blocking a part of a virus that is essential for its invasion). To allow the immune system to recognize millions of different antigens, the antigen-binding sites at both tips of the antibody come in an equally wide variety. In contrast, the remainder of the antibody is relatively constant. It only occurs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Susceptible Individual
In epidemiology a susceptible individual (sometimes known simply as a susceptible) is a member of a population who is at risk of becoming infected by a disease. Susceptible individuals Susceptibles have been exposed to neither the wild strain of the disease nor a vaccination against it, and thus have not developed immunity. Those individuals who have antibodies against an antigen associated with a particular infectious disease will not be susceptible, even if they did not produce the antibody themselves (for example, infants younger than six months who still have maternal antibodies passed through the placenta and from the colostrum, and adults who have had a recent injection of antibodies). However, these individuals soon return to the susceptible state as the antibodies are broken down. Some individuals may have a natural resistance to a particular infectious disease. However, except in some special cases such as malaria, these individuals make up such a small proportion of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dauer Stage
Dauer (German "''die Dauer''", English "the enduring", "the duration" in the meaning of "a length of time",) describes an alternative developmental stage of nematode worms, particularly rhabditids including ''Caenorhabditis elegans'', whereby the larva goes into a type of stasis and can survive harsh conditions. Since the entrance of the dauer stage is dependent on environmental cues, it represents a classic and well studied example of polyphenism. The dauer state is given other names in the various types of nematodes such as ‘diapause’ or ‘hypobiosis’, but since the ''C. elegans'' nematode has become the most studied nematode, the term ‘dauer stage’ or 'dauer larvae' is becoming universally recognised when referring to this state in other free-living nematodes. The dauer stage is also considered to be equivalent to the infective stage of parasitic nematode larvae. As E. Maupas first proposed in 1899-1900, all nematodes have five stages separated by four moults. Under ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spore
In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, fungi and protozoa. Bacterial spores are not part of a sexual cycle, but are resistant structures used for survival under unfavourable conditions. Myxozoan spores release amoeboid infectious germs ("amoebulae") into their hosts for parasitic infection, but also reproduce within the hosts through the pairing of two nuclei within the plasmodium, which develops from the amoebula. In plants, spores are usually haploid and unicellular and are produced by meiosis in the sporangium of a diploid sporophyte. Under favourable conditions the spore can develop into a new organism using mitotic division, producing a multicellular gametophyte, which eventually goes on to produce gametes. Two gametes fuse to form a zygote which develops into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mammal
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class (biology), class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in Female#Mammalian female, females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or hair, and three ossicles, middle ear bones. These characteristics distinguish them from reptiles (including birds) from which they Genetic divergence, diverged in the Carboniferous, over 300 million years ago. Around 6,400 extant taxon, extant species of mammals have been described divided into 29 Order (biology), orders. The largest Order (biology), orders, in terms of number of species, are the rodents, bats, and Eulipotyphla (hedgehogs, Mole (animal), moles, shrews, and others). The next three are the Primates (including humans, apes, monkeys, and others), the Artiodactyla (cetaceans and even-toed ungulates), and the Carnivora (cats, dogs, pinniped, seals, and others). In terms of cladistic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protozoan Parasite
Protozoan infections are parasitic diseases caused by organisms formerly classified in the kingdom Protozoa. They are usually contracted by either an insect vector or by contact with an infected substance or surface and include organisms that are now classified in the supergroups Excavata, Amoebozoa, SAR, and Archaeplastida. Protozoan infections are responsible for diseases that affect many different types of organisms, including plants, animals, and some marine life. Many of the most prevalent and deadly human diseases are caused by a protozoan infection, including African sleeping sickness, amoebic dysentery, and malaria. The species originally termed "protozoa" are not closely related to each other and only have superficial similarities (eukaryotic, unicellular, motile, though with exceptions). The terms "protozoa" (and protist) are usually discouraged in the modern biosciences. However, this terminology is still encountered in medicine. This is partially because of the conse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Protein
Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, responding to stimuli, providing structure to cells and organisms, and transporting molecules from one location to another. Proteins differ from one another primarily in their sequence of amino acids, which is dictated by the nucleotide sequence of their genes, and which usually results in protein folding into a specific 3D structure that determines its activity. A linear chain of amino acid residues is called a polypeptide. A protein contains at least one long polypeptide. Short polypeptides, containing less than 20–30 residues, are rarely considered to be proteins and are commonly called peptides. The individual amino acid residues are bonded together by peptide bonds and adjacent amino acid residues. The sequence of amino acid resid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genome
In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding genes, other functional regions of the genome such as regulatory sequences (see non-coding DNA), and often a substantial fraction of 'junk' DNA with no evident function. Almost all eukaryotes have mitochondria and a small mitochondrial genome. Algae and plants also contain chloroplasts with a chloroplast genome. The study of the genome is called genomics. The genomes of many organisms have been sequenced and various regions have been annotated. The International Human Genome Project reported the sequence of the genome for ''Homo sapiens'' in 200The Human Genome Project although the initial "finished" sequence was missing 8% of the genome consisting mostly of repetitive sequences. With advancements in technology that could handle seq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitochondrion
A mitochondrion (; ) is an organelle found in the cells of most Eukaryotes, such as animals, plants and fungi. Mitochondria have a double membrane structure and use aerobic respiration to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is used throughout the cell as a source of chemical energy. They were discovered by Albert von Kölliker in 1857 in the voluntary muscles of insects. The term ''mitochondrion'' was coined by Carl Benda in 1898. The mitochondrion is popularly nicknamed the "powerhouse of the cell", a phrase coined by Philip Siekevitz in a 1957 article of the same name. Some cells in some multicellular organisms lack mitochondria (for example, mature mammalian red blood cells). A large number of unicellular organisms, such as microsporidia, parabasalids and diplomonads, have reduced or transformed their mitochondria into other structures. One eukaryote, '' Monocercomonoides'', is known to have completely lost its mitochondria, and one multicellular organ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
