Discovery of Toxoplasma gondii
Descubrimiento de Toxoplasma gondii
- Date
- 1908 · confidence high
- Place
- Pasteur Institute of Tunis, Tunisia
- Credited to
- Charles Nicolle and Louis Manceaux; Alfonso Splendore (in parallel)
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Nicolle and Manceaux found a protozoan in the Tunisian gundi rodent (Ctenodactylus gundi) and named it Toxoplasma gondii. It is the parasite of toxoplasmosis, which infects much of humanity and is dangerous in pregnancy and in immunocompromised people.
Alfonso Splendore described it the same year in rabbits in Brazil; priority is shared, and is usually given to Nicolle and Manceaux for naming the species. Its clinical role in humans was clarified in the 1920s-1940s.
What it led to
- understanding of congenital toxoplasmosis and of infection in immunocompromised patients
- the life cycle with the cat as definitive host (1970)
- use of the parasite as a cell-biology model