Parasites as Neuropharmacologists

Reports are coming out this morning on a new study on one of the Loom's favorite organisms: Toxoplasma gondii, the single-celled parasite that lives in roughly half of all people on Earth and has the ability to alter the behavior of its host. I reported on the research last June in the New York Times, when the Stanford researchers reported their results at a scientific conference. It's nice to finally get the results on paper, though. The study is a fine example of an underappreciated part of science: replication. In 2000 British researchers carried out a study in which they put healthy and Toxoplasma infected rats in an outdoor enclosure and watched them nose around. They added odors to some of the corners of the enclosure; sometimes the odor of rats, sometimes of rabbits, sometimes of cat urine. They found that healthy rats were deeply affected by the scent of ...