The suffering stomach bugs cause is bad enough, but what’s worse is how a certain amoeba create food poisoning that can last months. NPR reported on a new discovery:
The single-cell animal bites off tiny chunks of intestine, chews on them for a while and then spits them out, microbiologists said last week in the journal Nature.
That’s right, folks, the little parasites — called Entamoeba Hystolytica — don’t even have the courtesy to kill your cells before they take a bite. They don’t even digest the parts they eat.
Internist William Petri and his team at the University of Virginia caught all the treachery under the microscope. They filmed a bunch of the amoebae munching down on both gut and red blood cells. And they watched as the parasites used the chew-and-spit method to dismantle an intestinal wall.
The team named the process trogocytosis, from the Greek trogo, or “to nibble.”
The parasite causes dysentery and colitis each year in tropical areas and developing countries. Scientists think it uses this technique to make more room to invade the intestine.
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[Image via NPR, courtesy of Katy Ralston]
