During the summer of 2024 we posted an article to biorxiv about the function of Cryptosporidium Oocyst Wall Proteins (COWPs) in Cryptosporidium transmission. We are excited to share this week that it has now been peer-reviewed and published at PLoS Pathogens!
https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1013561
Congrats to all the authors, but especially Dr. Ross Bacchetti who performed a lot of this work during his PhD in the lab. Also special thanks to Sarah Stevens, current PhD student for continuing the work and helping it get to publication.
This is a major output of the lab’s Sir Henry Dale Fellowship (Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust), and provided key preliminary data for our new Career Development Award (Wellcome Trust). Thanks to Susan Wyllie, David Horn, Marcus Lee and his lab, and the peer reviewers for their feedback on the early versions of the manuscript.
In this publication we confirm that the COWPs are true oocyst wall proteins, identify the first markers of the oocyst wall suture, and characterise oocysts that lack COWP8. This sets a foundation of experimental approaches to study oocyst wall formation and function in our current grant.
We look forward to celebration with as many co-authors as possible soon 🙂
Mattie Christine Pawlowic Lab 