10/29/2024
A Day in the Life of a Parasite
I came into existence in Brazil, deep in the Amazon jungle. From the very beginning when I first achieved consciousness, I wondered about my existence. It was not long before I realized that most of my siblings perished before they were hatched. You see, I am not an insect but a eukaryotic protist, a Plasmodium vivax parasite unable to survive outside one of two hosts – a female Anopheles mosquito and a human of any gender.
Not long after I came to be, I turned into a hitchhiker inside the intestine of a female adult mosquito. But the inside of the mosquito gut, was hell. I could survive only until the acids kill me. It was a race against time. That is why I am grateful to have reached the mosquito’s bloodstream, where I transformed into sexual but dormant forms. My fate was tied to that of a mosquito. Where she goes, there I was. Once I exited the mosquito intestine, the race was on to transit very different environments until I complete my 3 life cycles. I am an oddball and shaped to optimize each of my different environments.
The challenges that for my mosquito host was to survive being gobbled up by fish and other predators, being swatted by human hands, or simply starve to death if I am physically trapped without access to water and food. One of the greatest nuisances is what humans call bed nets. They seem to think that once set up, mosquitoes are unable to enter the space. Not true. They simply hover and wait for the occasional moments when the humans open the net to p*e or do other things I shall not mention in polite company.
The female parasite becomes an egg while the male parasite matures into sperms (gametes) which fertilizes the eggs. The fertilized cell can glide and explore its environment. It then migrates to the outer lining of the mosquito’s stomach and transforms into a cyst. Each cyst produces thousands of individual parasites which then seeks the mosquito’s salivary gland, from where they will ride the saliva to infect another host.
Humans called me a sporozoite issued from an oocyst. After my escape from the mosquito intestine, I migrated as quickly as I could to the salivary glands of the insect. I had completed part one of my life cycle. Wait, you ask. How did I become a sporozoite in the first place? Ah, yes. Before that I was merely a gametocyte sucked up by my mosquito host from the blood of an infected human. Don’t ask what or where I was before that – for that would entail mentioning the blood stage in a human host. I consider my life beginning post-fertilization, when I had the potential to be an adult and not just half of a self in someone’s red blood cells.
While I took refuge in the salivary glands of the Mozzy, I awaited the moment I might enter a human host. This does not take long in Brazil’s Amazonia. However, contrary to popular belief, mosquitoes are not found everywhere in the Amazon jungle. And certainly not on every river in Amazonia. You see, mosquitoes are sensitive to pH values. The largest tributary of the Amazon River is Rio Negro, or the Black River and it has hardly any mosquitoes where it flows. The water runs black because like all blackwater rivers, incomplete breakdown of phenol-containing vegetation from sandy clearings left humic acid in the water and made it pretty acidic, from pH 2.9-4.2. This makes it difficult for mosquito larvae to develop on the water’s surface.
All my fellow sporozoites knew that we cannot stay inside the mosquito forever, so when my host took a bite from a human host, I was injected along with the salver to prevent clotting. It was strange to leave one host and enter another. Once I entered the bloodstream, the one-way flow of blood pushed along the liquid Jetstream. I remembered that my next destination would complete part 2 of my life cycle – the liver! Once I got into this massive organ, I went into high gear to reproduce asexually. I became a schizont. As I became many, we self-ruptured and destroyed the liver cell to enter the bloodstream again, this time as a community of identical trophozoites.
We looked for red blood cells to pe*****te and make them our new homes. Here again, we formed a schizont to reproduce asexually before self-rupture and releasing even more of me, back to the trophozoite stage. We again reproduced asexually and became many, this time destroying the red blood cells to release new ourselves. Here in part 3 of my life-cycle, I became male and female gametocytes. I morphed into a gametocyte in preparation to exist my human host. He’s weakened anyway and has succumbed to a sickness they call malaria.
I feel bad about it. But the only way for me to live is sometimes, for someone such as he, to die.
The philosophical question is, as my gametocytes left the human host for another mosquito where fertilization takes place, will I still be me?
As I recount my life, I am still inside the human host’s bloodstream awaiting exit. I have thus been a sporozoite released from an oocyst, an exo-erythrocytic (liver stage) schizont, a trophozoite, an erythrocytic (blood stage) schizont, a set of gametocytes, and once I get ingested by another mosquito, I will become micro and macrogametocytes, an ookinete and finally part of an oocyte to await release as a new sporozoite.
Each stage of my existence is rife with danger and opportunity. My DNA is remarkably advanced enough for my sensors to know when to activate the next stage of reality to protect me as I enter different windowless places where I am an invader. Having to enter bloodstreams and intestines, livers and skin, all nasty places swarming with armies serving the immune system, looking for outsiders like me to destroy. The chance of a single sporozoite completing all three parts of my life-cycle is extremely slim, perhaps one in a million – that is why we Plasmodium vivax parasites must keep replicating like crazy. Its our only advantage – sheer numbers.
We breed to overwhelm. Don’t hate us.
On a different matter, it is impossible to ponder, at which point will I, the former sporozoite, cease to exist? Or is each transitional shape-shifting element of me a new and different me?
Does my consciousness follow my physiology or does each person begat my own awareness?
How is how biology impacts theology.
