A 16-day-old white rhinoceros calf died suddenly while in excellent condition and showing no obvious previous clinical signs. It was the 9th calf of a mature female kept free-ranging with 11 other rhinoceros as well as various other game species on a 2000 hectare game breeding centre adjacent to the town of Lichtenburg and outlying cattle farmlands in the Northern Province. At post mortem exami...

The protozoan parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, interconverts between fast-growing tachyzoites and slow-growing bradyzoites within intermediate hosts. The surface of T. gondii is covered by the SAG1-related sequence (SRS) superfamily of glycosyl phosphatidyl inositol-anchored proteins, many of which are stage-specific. Previous transient transfection of BSR4, a member of the SRS superfamily, showed ...

Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular parasite that causes chronic infection by the develop‐ ment of bradyzoites housed in tissue cysts, preferably in the muscles and central nervous system. The composition and the function of the cyst wall are still not fully understood. Are T. gondii cysts able to incorporate nutrients through its wall? If so, how would these nutrients be traversed to cross t...

A highly sensitive and specific method has been developed to reproducibly detect and quantitate Toxoplasma gondii burden in animal tissue samples using T. gondii ITS1-derived primers and a fluorogenic probe via real-time PCR. Assay specificity was confirmed against a panel of DNA samples from T. gondii and other common protozoa as well as host animal tissue. This Toxo TaqMan assay was able to d...

Toxoplasmosis caused by Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), an obligate intercellular protozoan, is considered to be a leading cause of foodborne mortality in the United States (www.cdc.gov). Even in the post-HAART era, fatal toxoplasmic encephalitis (TE) due to reactivation of chronic Toxoplasma infection remains a major problem in Toxoplasma-seropositive AIDS patients in developing countries [1]. ...

The primary culture of intestinal epithelial cells from domestic cats is an efficient cellular model to study the enteric cycle of Toxoplasma gondii in a definitive host. The parasite-host cell ratio can be pointed out as a decisive factor that determines the intracellular fate of bradyzoites forms. The development of the syncytial-like forms of T. gondii was observed using the 1:20 bradyzoite-...

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular protozoan parasite that can infect most warm-blooded animals and cause severe and life-threatening disease in developing fetuses and in immunecompromised patients. Although Toxoplasma was discovered over 100 years ago, we are only now beginning to appreciate the importance of the role that parasite modulation of its host has on parasite growth, bra...

Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) is a protozoan parasite that infects a wide range of intermediate hosts, including all mammals and birds. Up to 20% of the human population in the US and 30% in the world are chronically infected. This paper presents a mathematical model to describe intra-host dynamics of T. gondii infection. The model considers the invasion process, egress kinetics, interconversio...