{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.0273065784029789, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0024824162184526274, 'mean_word_length': 4.757142857142857, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Brazil. A deadly parasite spurs up-to-the-minute biology

CAXAMBU, BRAZIL-When hundreds of biologists from Brazil and elsewhere gathered here for a recent meeting, the work they discussed would not have been out of place at Cold Spring Harbor or Heidelberg: genome mapping and sequencing, protein crystallography, and rational drug design. But all this up-to-the-minute science was aimed at a traditional focus of Brazilian biology: Trypanosoma cruzi, the insect-borne parasite that causes Chagas disease. Discovered 86 years ago by a Brazilian doctor named Carlos Chagas, the parasite sparked a public health campaign and a national research effort. T. cruzi is now studied by Brazilian biologists of every rank, from the greenest undergraduates to the most senior laboratory chiefs, and it is the driving force for international collaborations and the first major genome project organized and led by Latin Americans. One reason for the organism's broad influence on biology in Brazil is that it has proved a tenacious foe. Today, after eight decades, researchers say they are more confident than ever that they are getting the upper hand in their battle with T. cruzi. But success is not yet in their grasp: Each year in Brazil, several thousand people die of heart and digestive problems brought on by the disease, which infects as many as 18 million people worldwide. So far, researchers have not been able to develop a cure or an effective treatment. Nor have they got a cheap, specific blood test. As a result, the battle against T. cruzi remains a driving force in Brazilian biology, propelling its first ventures into the front lines of molecular biology. The battle began when Chagas, at age 29, went to fight malaria among railroad workers in a rural town north of Rio de Janeiro. While there, he noticed unusual symptoms among the local people-lethargy, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat-which he guessed were caused by an unknown parasite. He quickly tracked down the vector, a longsnouted triatomine bug that lived in thatched houses and sucked blood from the inhabitants as they slept. From the bug, Chagas extracted a whiplike protozoan, kin to the trypanosome that causes sleeping sickness in Africa (T. brucei). Chagas proved Nasty bite. A bloodsucking triatomine bug transmits the protozoan T. cruzi. Infected heart muscle (left) reveals a cluster of the organisms, to the right of the space.