Parasitologist María Teresa Galán-Puchades relates the image of the dwarf planet Pluto with the parasite Taenia solium. Although it might seem complicated to relate two unalike sciences as Astronomy and Parasitology, full professor in the field of Parasitology of the Department of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology of Universitat de València, has achieved such relation in a curious publication in ‘Science’ journal, titled ‘Planet Pluto vs. Taenia eggs’.
Doctor Galán-Puchades has been working for years in the diseases produced by Taenia solium parasites in humans, that is, taeniasis and cisticercosis, with special emphasis in the Taenia asiatica specie. The University of Granada, the Chungbuk National University of South Korea and the Center for Disease Prevention and Control of Guangxi, China are the main collaborators. As the result of this international collaboration, Galán-Puchades led a publication on the first data on the ultra-structure of the Taenia asiatica eggs performed by means of scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM, TEM). (Galán-Puchades et al. Parasitol Res 2016.doi: 10.1007/s00436-016-5165-4).
At the same time, planet Pluto’s surface, given its peculiar polygonal structure, is being a matter of numerous publications, many of them in the journal Science. Doctor Galán-Puchades, supported by her collaborators, found an evident similarity between the images of Pluto’s surface structure -a planet located millions of kilometres away from Earth, with a diameter of 2,732 Km- provided by NASA, and the scanning images of the embryophoric (thick layer composed of numerous blocks surrounding the parasite’s embryo) surface of Taenia eggs that measure merely about 30-40 micrometres.
As full professor Galán-Puchades puts it, with this article in Science, Parasitology makes a nod to Astronomy, sciences which never seemed able to be close to each other; and, however, Taenia eggs could undoubtedly be considered the ‘dwarfest’ Pluto in the microscopic universe of parasites.
Last update: 20 de july de 2016 09:16.
News release
