A PARASITE that claims around 50,000 lives a year in Latin America could use an entirely novel mechanism to cause disease. A study of patients with Chagas disease has found segments of the parasite’s DNA integrated into their genomes.
Besides viruses, no other organism that causes disease in animals has been found to integrate its DNA into its host. So not surprisingly, reaction to the new finding has been mixed.
“If integration does happen, it is going to be a very rare event,” says Rick Tarleton at the University of Georgia in Athens, “I think it is highly unlikely to have any relevance to the…
