The parasite as puppet masters
Forget popular video game Plants Vs. Zombies, some plants are zombies and scientists have uncovered how bacterial parasites turn them into the living dead. “For the first time, we can reveal how this remarkable manipulation takes place,” says Prof. Saskia Hogenhout from the John Innes Centre.“In that sense, the plant world is ahead of animal biology - where manipulations also take place but no mechanisms have been uncovered to show how.” For example, the parasitic lancet liver fluke infects the brain of ants, compelling them to climb to the tip of a blade of grass and into the mouth of a grazing animal. This is not far from the brain-eating zombies of the video game. Another parasite is thought to change the behaviour of rats to make them more susceptible to predation.
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