And so, #14DaysofMicrobiologyPoems continues.
I reached out to the science Twitterverse earlier this month in search of 14 microbes worthy of poems.
Here is Poem Thirteen, requested by @DrNeilStone.
Trypanosoma brucei’s chronic infection
How strange it is that a parasite
Can control your sleep.
Encounter a tse tse fly
Carrying Trypanosoma brucei,
And it will leaves you with African sleeping sickness.
First comes fevers, headaches, and joint pain.
Then the confusions and sleep troubles creep in,
Daytime sleepiness and nighttime wakefulness.
Poor coordination, numbness.
There’s no turning back
When it comes to neurological damage.
Soon, coma, organ failure, and death
In months or years
If left untreated.
Essential to the long-term infection
Is the VSG coat,
That covers the surface of T. brucei,
And allows the parasite to hide from the immune system.
The parasite can make hundreds, even thousands of different VSG proteins.
Even ten percent of the T. brucei genome code of these stealthy shields.
As a cell divides, the VSG coat can switch
To something the host hasn’t seen before,
Making the parasite population highly diverse
And difficult for the host immunity to take down.
Further reading:
wow