Alicja Nowakowska and Jakub Wojciechowski – doctoral students from the Faculty of Fundamental Technological Problems at Wrocław University of Science and Technology – are looking for answers to secrets the brain-eating amoeba hides and how dangerous the bacteria it carries are for humans.
The scientists are conducting their research at the Pasteur Institute in Guadeloupe under the supervision of Dr Isabel Marcelino, who heads the ‘Amoeba Team’. Their research internship is being carried out under the Erasmus+ programme. The young scientists are working on amoebae, single-celled organisms with pathogenic potential.
‘One of the rare tropical diseases that could expand its range of occurrence due to global warming is the infection of the so-called brain-eating amoeba, an organism that is locally found in Guadeloupe, among other places. The Pasteur Institute, on the other hand, has one of the few such well-developed research centres for these microorganisms’, says Alicja Nowakowska.
