(9/9) Many thanks to our great collaborators Photini Sinnis and @freddyfrischknecht.bsky.social as well as to our dream team Mirko Singer and @lettermann.bsky.social. And to Collaborative Research Center #SFB1129 and Priority Programme #SPP2332 "Physics of Parasitism", both funded by @dfg.de.

(8/9) Our work is behind a paywall, but you can use the following share link to read it:

rdcu.be/eRu7H

(7/9) Interestingly, ookinetes (the malaria parasites infecting mosquitos) and toxoplasma (the causative agent of toxoplasmosis) move left-handedly and seem to follow the chiral flow model. Here a movie summarizing all our findings:

(6/9) Using two-sided traction force and super-resolution microscopies, we then provided experimental evidence for the asymmetric distribution model:

(5/9) Extending a theoretical model that we have developed earlier for gliding motility based on surface flows, we then reasoned that these motility patterns can be explained best by an asymmetric apical release of adhesins. Read here our earlier work in @pnas.org:

doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

(4/9) A novel hydrogel sandwich assay confirmed that CW-sporozoites move down and CCW-sporozoites move up, in agreement with right-handed chirality both in 2D and 3D.

(3/9) We then realized that the sporozoites spiraling down onto a glass slide there move in clockwise circles, opposite to the situation in medium, where they move in counterclockwise direction. This implies that in medium, they try to move up, not down, as we always had assumed.

(2/9) We first used synthetic hydrogels and image processing to demonstrate that in homogeneous 3D environment, the malaria parasites infecting mice and men (sporozoites) move on regular helices which are almost always right-handed.

Amazing work, Daniel. Congrats 👍👍👍

Huge congrats, David👍

This work is also available as preprint arxiv.org/abs/2502.11833. The final version is here: doi.org/10.1103/8h9z...