Collective Behavior: From Cells to Animals to Us

Swarming parasites may aid infection

I was at an interesting workshop at GeorgiaTech last week "Regulation, dynamics and evolution of social behavior".

http://www.socialbehavior.biology.gatech.edu/

I was particularly struck by some work by Kent Hill from UCLA on extremely coordinated collective behavior in African Trypanosomes. These parasites are responsible for sleeping sickness. They have a paper in press in PLoS Pathogens so I won't say more for now, but it's one to look out for. The degree of coordination is quite remarkable and provides new concepts for the development and pathogenesis of parasitic protozoa. Of course the immune response to such parasites is collective itself, and that too is poorly understood.

http://www.mimg.ucla.edu/faculty/Hill/

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