Matthew S. Tucker

TL;DR: This unit deals exclusively with the parasite Schistosoma mansoni, which is the species most frequently maintained in the laboratory, and describes maintenance and collection procedures for various stages of the schistosome that have immunologic interest, including infection of mice with cercariae, collection of cercarie, preparation of in vitro-derived schistOSomules and in vivo-derivedSchistosomules, and collection of adult worms and eggs.

TL;DR: USER friendly cloning techniques were incorporated into pCVD442-based allelic exchange suicide vectors and other expression vectors to enable the rapid and efficient capture of PCR amplicons and to create targeted deletions in V. vulnificus, bypassing the need for two-step, suicide vector-mediated allelic Exchange.

TL;DR: TheArtemisinin resistance phenotype is defined as a decrease in susceptibility to artemisinins along with the ability to recover from drug-induced dormancy following supraclinical concentrations of the drug.

TL;DR: Mutational analysis and phase variation of V. vulnificus wild-type strains and phase variants showed induction of high-frequency phase variation to the opaque encapsulated phenotype during oyster infections that did not occur in strains recovered from seawater, indicating a likely mechanism for environmental survival and for induction of the more virulent phenotype.

TL;DR: It is experimentally demonstrated for the first time that artemisinin resistance provides a fitness advantage that is selected for with infrequent exposure to drug, but is lost in the absence of exposure to art Artemisinin drugs.