Toxoplasma Gondii

Louis M. Weiss, MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine (Division of Infectious Diseases) and Professor of Pathology (Division of Parasitology and Tropical Medicine) of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York. Dr. Weiss received his M.D. and M.P.H degrees from the Johns Hopkins University in 1982. He then completed a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Following this fellowship, he joined the faculty at Einstein where he is currently a Professor of Pathology and Medicine. His laboratory group has an active research program on parasitic diseases with a research focus on Toxoplasma gondii, the Microsporidia and Trypanosoma cruzi. Dr. Weiss is the author of over 200 publications and the editor of 3 books on parasitology. He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, Infectious Disease Society of America and the American Academy of Microbiology. Dr. Weiss is the Co-Director of the Einstein Global Health Center. Dr. Kami Kim is a physician-scientist who joined the USF faculty in 2017 as a Professor of Internal Medicine (Infectious Diseases and International Medicine) and Professor of Global Health. Her laboratory focuses upon understanding the pathogenesis of toxoplasmosis and malaria, parasitic diseases of global significance. The Toxoplasma projects use a multidisciplinary systems biology approach to understand how the parasite senses and responds to changes in its host. Using a combination of epigenomics, genetics and proteomics, her group is studying how the parasite transitions from the pathogenic tachyzoite form to the persistent bradyzoite form. She is investigating the epigenetic and genetic factors that govern the host response to parasites. Dr. Kim is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the Infectious Disease Society of America as well as an elected member of the Association for American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

• 1. The history and life cycle of Toxoplasma gondii2. The ultrastructure of Toxoplasma gondii3. Cryo-EM to define the Toxoplasma gondii conoid and other structures4. Molecular epidemiology, population structure of Toxoplasma gondii5. Human Toxoplasma infection6. Ocular disease due to Toxoplasma gondii7. One Health: Toxoplasmosis in wild and Domestic Animals8. Toxoplasma animal models and therapeutics9. Toxoplasma gondii: lipid synthesis and uptake and host cell interactions10. Metabolic networks and metabolomics11. The apicoplast, mitochondrion and mitoribosomes of Toxoplasma gondii12. Calcium and cyclic nucleotide signalling networks in Toxoplasma gondii13. Toxoplasma secretory proteins and their roles in parasite cell cycle and infection14. Endomembrane trafficking pathways in Toxoplasma15. The Toxoplasma cytoskeleton: structures, proteins, and processes16. Toxoplasma gondii: secreted effectors and host cell manipulation17. Bradyzoite and sexual stage development in Toxoplasma gondii18. Development and application of classical genetics in Toxoplasma gondii19. Genetic manipulation of Toxoplasma gondii20. Regulation of gene expression in Toxoplasma gondii21. Identification of subcellular proteome using hyperLOPIT22. Cerebral toxoplasmosis23. Innate immunity to Toxoplasma gondii24. Adaptive immunity to Toxoplasma gondiiAppendix A: The effect of murine gene deficiencies on the outcome of Toxoplasma gondii infectionAppendix B: Databases and Scientific Resources for Toxoplasma gondii Research