Course Description
Parasitism is an extremely successful way of life and it has been estimated that more than 50 percent of all known species are parasitic at some stage of their life cycle. This course will introduce the major groups of parasites ranging from single-celled organisms such as Plasmodium which causes malaria to tapeworms which can infect rats and occasionally humans. In addition we will also cover some broader aspects of parasitology such as: how parasites evade the host immune response, how a parasitic infection can change the behavior of the host, and how having a parasite might not necessarily be a bad thing! The course will include laboratory sessions during which we will get to see live and preserved specimens.
Instructor: Judith Humphries, visiting assistant professor of biology
Judith Humphries teaches Integrative Biology: Heterotrophs, Parasitology and Immunology. She obtained her B.S. in Biological Sciences and a Ph.D. in parasitology at The Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Humphries carried out her postdoctoral research at UW-Madison and Iowa State University where she studied the interaction between the trematode parasite Schistosoma mansoni and its snail intermediate host. Her current research at Lawrence aims to identify the factors which control gene expression in the snail host, in particular genes associated with immune responses.
