What we're looking at is a parasite
called Echinostoma trivolvis.
It's a scientific name for an intestinal
fluke.
It's a parasitic worm that infects the
intestines
of mammals, in this case muskrats. These
parasites live on snails
that live in ponds, streams
local in the area. So we go out, we get
the snails
and we have to collect a lot of snails
because not very many of them
are infected. We bring all the snails
that we collected, which can be hundreds at
a time,
back to the lab. We keep the infected
ones and
the uninfected snails we take back
wherever we found them
and return them because we don't really
want to disrupt
the ecology. What we're hoping to do is
use
this parasite as a model species to
study how
flukes get transmitted from one host to
another
and the reason why we can use a muskrat
parasite to study a human disease or an
agricultural disease
is because all flukes by definition have
to infect a snail first.
So they infect the snail first and then
they go on and
infect other things. We can't really see
what a parasite
does inside of it's host. So what we're
trying to do is make an artificial host.
I've made something that's never been
made in
the world before. I have made snail jello.
So that's just collagen extracted from
snails.
What I'm trying to do is see if collagen
or gelatin will attract
these parasites, trick it into thinking
that this lump
of gelatin is actually a snail and so
it will
burrow into that lump of gelatin
and we can see what it's doing as it's
entering. I'm trying to
trick this parasite into
living its entire life cycle without a
host.
It's ambitious (laughs),
especially because it's only been done
once
with any other fluke, but
I've got a few leads that I'm following and
I've got the support of
the faculty. So we'll see.
I'm hoping, I'm hoping that before I
leave, before I graduate,
that I'll be able to make an
actual scientific contribution.
