And I’m back!!  Armed with more expertise, I’ll be tackling the wet lab a little more aggressively this time — and for good reason — the parasites are ready to invade Toronto! More precisely, my currently computational lab (with the exception of a single relatively unused lab bench) is soon to be transformed into a Toxoplasma-friendly environment.   My supervisor has recruited myself along with a new post-doc, Verena, whose previous expertise spans the likes of malaria parasites and Trypanosoma, to set up the new laboratory.   This means I’ll need to familiarize myself with the culturing techniques and general know-how of working with Toxoplasma.  It’s been an exciting ride so far, and I’ve already learned how to “passage” the parasites along with their friendly hosts, known as HFF cells.  At the same time, I’ll be continuing my previous experiments with the goal of showing that certain enzymes represent potential drug targets.   Hopefully, the results I get will help me with my next publication which will build on meta-analyses described in my review and utilize findings from my methods paper.  Onwards, we go — let the parasitology games resume.

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