Host-Symbiont Interactions

Whitehead Institute Member Zuri Sullivan and colleagues propose that sickness behavior — fatigue, loss of appetite, altered sleep, and social withdrawal — is not merely a byproduct of illness, but part of an integrated, organism-wide defense system that helps promote survival.

A new study from the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Sebastian Lourido uses a method called thermal profiling to determine which proteins are involved in calcium signaling, an essential process that parasites use when invading host cells.

Haley Licon is a postdoc in Whitehead Institute Member Sebastian Lourido’s lab studying how the parasite Toxoplasma gondii switches between stages during infection. We sat down with Haley to learn more about her and her experiences in and out of the lab. 

A new screening method in the parasite Toxoplasma gondii allows researchers to look beyond whether or not a gene is essential to survival and track the gene’s product through time and physical space 

A paper from the lab of Whitehead Institute Member Rudolf Jaenisch suggests that the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2 can integrate into the host cell genome and be expressed in some patient-derived tissues.