It blows my mind the complexity of the life cycle of Plasmodium, the microorganism that causes Malaria. In order for this protozoan to complete its life cycle, it needs to live in both Anopheles mosquitos as well as in humans (or in other primates, reptiles, birds, rodents…). . The mosquito Anopheles is the vector of transmission of the Plasmodium parasite to humans, but it is also the host of important steps of the Plasmodium life cycle. . Once Plasmodium infects an Anopheles mosquito and completes some phases of its life cycle, Plasmodium will migrate to the mosquito's salivary glands. Female mosquitos will bite humans to get their nutritious blood (only female mosquitos will do this and will do it to obtain nutrients to develop their eggs). So when an infected female mosquito bites a human, Plasmodium will go from the mosquito salivary glands to the human circulatory system, and eventually will reach the human liver. Once in the liver, Plasmodium will divide and progress into a different stage of its life cycle. At this point, Plasmodium is able to move to the blood and infect red blood blood cells of the human host. Incredibly, Plasmodium gets inside red blood cells (Plasmodium is very small in size at this stage) and once inside it divides and produces more of its kind. The red blood cells end up bursting and the released Plasmodium parasites infect more red blood cells. Plasmodium eventually finishes its life cycle in the red blood cells and when another female Anopheles mosquito bites this infected human, the mosquito will suck up Plasmodium infected blood and will become infected itself, and so the cycle will repeat again. . By the way, the blood sample in the video has been fixed and stained in order to detect the Plasmodium parasites. . Did you know that every year there are between 200-250 million cases of Malaria in the world? . The second microorganism shown in the video is the scary Trypanosoma gambiense, a flagellated protozoan found in Africa. This is why the disease it produces is commonly called “African Sleeping Sickness.” Other Trypanosoma species can be found on other continents and cause different diseases, such as Chagas disease. . When a tsetse fly bites an infected human, the fly picks up the microorganism and acts as a vector, transmitting the Trypanosoma parasites to another human. . Thankfully, the number of infections and deaths caused by African Sleeping Sickness has considerably decreased over the last few decades. The good news is that there are several effective medications to treat this disease. However, the disease is almost always lethal for untreated infected individuals. . In case you are wondering, the blood sample in the video has been fixed and stained in order to better observe the Trypanosome parasites. . By the way, this infected blood sample is not human, it’s from an infected rat. Why a rat? Because rats and other animals can act as reservoirs for Trypanosoma. In other words, rats and other animals can also get infected with Trypanosoma and indirectly contribute to the transmission of African Sleeping Sickness. However, tsetse flies are still the vector of transmission of the disease: human to human or animal to human. . For this video, I used a Leica ZOOM 200 stereoscope and an Olympus BX41 microscope at up to 1000X magnification. #microscopy #microscope #bloodinfection #sleepingsickness #trypanosoma #parasites #histology #malaria #drbioforever - @dr.bioforever