Protista as disease-carriers
Protista live anywhere, provided there is even a little amount of water.
There are marine and freshwater species that live both floating on the water or on the seabed. A small water pond is enough for these micro-organisms to live; they can usually be found even in the thin film of water that covers the soil particles. Finally, there are many parasitic species, some of which transmit serious diseases to man. Here are some of the most important diseases that affect man:
• the sleeping sickness caused by trypanosomes, such as, for instance, the Tripanosoma gambiense, transmitted to man by some species of the tsetse fly
• toxoplasmosis, a disease affecting nearly 50% of the human population; harmless in itself, it becomes dangerous when it affects a pregnant woman since it is transmitted to the child, causing deformities
• malaria, transmitted to man by the anopheles, parasited by the Plasmodium. This disease still causes approximately 3 million victims a year, of whom one million are African children.
Special reports
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2 July 2014
A hoax? No thank you, I prefer to find out myself!
In Italian, bufala: a hoax, also means a female buffalo...
3 November 2014
Conan the bacterium
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8 March 2021
8 March. We remember Rosalind Franklin, the great female DNA scientist.
DNA was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss biochemist in 1869. It was a brilliant, but not complicated operation:…
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In search of the riders of icebergs
International Polar Bear Day, set up by Polar Bears International, a non-profit organisation, was held on 27 February. The aim…
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8 January 2021
Smart as a crow
Some people call them "monkeys with feathers" because they can do clever things comparable to many of our monkey cousins.…
18 December 2020
The Christmas Star Tradition
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24 November 2020
The glow of duck-billed platypuses
It's easy to answer "which is the strangest animal?". The answer: the platypus. These strange creatures live only in Australia…
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2 July 2014
A hoax? No thank you, I prefer to find out myself!
In Italian, bufala: a hoax, also means a female buffalo...
3 November 2014
Conan the bacterium
Have you ever leafed through the pages of a book of Guinness World Records? You can find records of all…
-
8 March 2021
8 March. We remember Rosalind Franklin, the great female DNA scientist.
DNA was first isolated by Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss biochemist in 1869. It was a brilliant, but not complicated operation:…
27 February 2021
In search of the riders of icebergs
International Polar Bear Day, set up by Polar Bears International, a non-profit organisation, was held on 27 February. The aim…
-
2 July 2014
A hoax? No thank you, I prefer to find out myself!
In Italian, bufala: a hoax, also means a female buffalo...
-
3 November 2014
Conan the bacterium
Have you ever leafed through the pages of a book of Guinness World Records? You can find records of all…
From the Multimedia section
Facts
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Bio-luminescence
Many sea animals, including a lot of fish and molluscs that live in the dark in the ocean depths...
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Bread and cheese, wine or beer
Yeast is used to make wine, beer and bread. When mixed with the bread dough...
Down-pouring bacteria
It sounds incredible, but recent researches have found that bacteria can cause some atmospheric phenomena...
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Bacteria as Sherlock Holmes
A drop of blood, a fragment of skin or a hair found on the scene of a crime can supply…
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13 May 2011
Bio-luminescence
Many sea animals, including a lot of fish and molluscs that live in the dark in the ocean depths...
-
Bread and cheese, wine or beer
Yeast is used to make wine, beer and bread. When mixed with the bread dough...
-
Down-pouring bacteria
It sounds incredible, but recent researches have found that bacteria can cause some atmospheric phenomena...
-
Bio-luminescence
Many sea animals, including a lot of fish and molluscs that live in the dark in the ocean depths...