Parasites need coats to

Parasites are sneaky organisms that have developed interesting ways of invading their host as well as staying alive once they have infiltrated.  One of these mechanisms is a coating called glycocalyx that is essentially a protective coat that parasites where to trip your bodies bouncer and get into the club.  

The parasites that have this outer coating such as, Trypanosoma brucei brucei, have a membrane surrounding them that mimics glycan (sugar) structures that interact with the host cell membranes to infect the host.

The main idea behind this post is just that there are many mechanisms by which parasites can integrate into a host and this path of infection is relatively new.  Much like with other posts on my blog and other things in biology ( specifically microbiology and molecular biology) there are people working on ways to target glyosylation production as well as glycan antigen structures.  

Rodrigues, Joao A, et al. "Parasite Glycobiology: A Bittersweet Symphony." Plos Pathogens, vol. 11, no. 11, 12 Nov. 2015


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