UCLA researchers map parasite's molecular blueprint to combat sleeping sickness

Millions of people worldwide are affected by African sleeping sickness and related parasitic infections that cause fever, neurological symptoms, and can be life-threatening.

For generations, Trypanosoma brucei — the parasite behind African sleeping sickness — has moved through human blood and brain with a kind of terrible efficiency that science could observe but not fully explain. Now, researchers at UCLA have used cryogenic-electron microscopy and artificial intelligence to produce the first complete three-dimensional molecular map of the flagellum, the whiplike structure at the heart of the parasite's survival. In doing so, they have identified 40 proteins unique to the organism — potential vulnerabilities in a pathogen that has long seemed invulnerable — offer

UCLA researchers map parasite's molecular blueprint to combat sleeping sickness

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