Coordination Funds

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Parasitism, the intimate antagonistic liaison between two species, has always fascinated scientists from a variety of disciplines. Traditionally, parasitology was concerned mainly with organismic studies, while today’s parasitology focuses on medically-relevant cellular and molecular mechanisms, at ever-increasing depth. The priority programme “Physics of Parasitism” defines a new frontier in this field, namely the physics of parasites interacting with their hosts. This interaction is controlled by the anatomy of the parasites (Bauplan), the physics of their locomotion, and the mechanics of their attachment to host structures. Parasitism has evolved many times and hence, there are numerous convergent solutions to the challenge of how to physically hijack a host. These long periods of co-evolution have equipped parasites with high degrees of optimality. Examples are parasitic tools such as suckers and shields, or refined locomotive devices that allow attachment and also navigation in various body fluids, in crowded and confined spaces, and in highly viscous environments - often at surprisingly high speeds. The priority programme will study the physics of parasitism using a selection of complementary and tractable parasites that colonise representative host niches. These include parasitic protists such as Plasmodium, Toxoplasma, and Trypanosoma, as well as metazoan parasites such as Schistosoma, Fasciola, and Echinococcus. We ultimately aim to elaborate a comparative and quantitative framework of the physical constraints and mechanical forces acting at the dynamic parasite-host interfaces. We will measure the material properties and mechanics of parasites in their niches, uncover the physical basis of their locomotion, and determine the mechanical and physical basis for their attachment. To reach these goals, the priority programme uniquely combines expertise from parasitology, molecular cell biology, experimental and theoretical physics, mathematics and simulation science. In this way, “Physics of Parasitism” opens new chapters in both parasitology and the physics of life. We envisage that the results obtained during our interdisciplinary endeavour might expose novel ways of combating parasitic diseases based on mechanobiology, against which resistances are unlikely to evolve.