Microbe Talk Extra: Cryptosporidium
This summer, many people living in Lancashire were forced to boil their drinking and cooking water, after an outbreak of a parasite that can cause a nasty bout of stomach cramps and diarrhoea. This outbreak was caused by the protozoan Cryptosporidium, a water-borne parasite that can cause a potentially life-threatening infection in the very young or the immunocompromised.
To learn more about Cryptosporidium we spoke to Christopher Miller, a PhD student at the University of Kent, who is looking at ways to better culture this poorly-understood parasite.
Image credit: Steve Johnson on Flickr under CC BY 2.0