Life cycle of malaria

Part 1: Human host

When a malaria-carrying mosquito bites a human host, the malaria parasite enters the bloodstream, multiplies in the liver cells, and is then released back into the bloodstream, where it infects and destroys red blood cells.

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Part 2: Mosquito host

A mosquito becomes infected with malaria when it sucks the blood from an infected human. Once inside the mosquito, the parasites reproduce in the gut and accumulate in the salivary glands, ready to infect another human host with the next bite.

Click to play (requires Flash plug-in)

From the 2007 Holiday Lectures — AIDS: Evolution of an Epidemic

Antigen presentation and CTL

How a cell infected by a virus signals cytotoxic T lymphocytes to kill the cell before the virus replicates and spreads.

2 minutes 34 seconds
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AZT blocks reverse transcriptase

HIV's reverse transcriptase mistakes AZT for thymidine. Once incorporated, AZT stops reverse transcription.

1 minute 46 seconds
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HIV life cycle

How HIV infects a cell and replicates itself using reverse transcriptase and the host's cellular machinery.

4 minutes 52 seconds
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Protease inhibitors

Protease inhibitors prevent maturation of viral proteins inside HIV particles.

1 minute 6 seconds
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U.S. AIDS epidemic

A visual representation of the U.S. AIDS epidemic from 1981 to 1997. Each dot represents 30 cases.

31 seconds
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From the 1999 Holiday Lectures — 2000 and Beyond: Confronting the Microbe Menace

Bacterial Conjugation

Bacteria can transfer genetic material, and thus drug resistance, to other bacteria via conjugation.

23 seconds
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E. coli Infection Strategy

Watch this animation to see the molecular tricks that an infectious strain of Escherichia coli uses to infect your gut.

2 minutes 52 seconds
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Learn More

Intracellular Infection by Salmonella

In this animation, you can see how one S. typhimurium invades an epithelial cell of the intestinal tract, survives the intracellular defense mechanisms of the host cell, and multiplies.

1 minute 18 seconds
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Recombination of Viral Genome

When two different strains of influenza infect a single cell, their genetic material can mix freely, resulting in a new third strain of influenza.

3 minutes 5 seconds
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Viral Lifecycle

Delivering a single virus to a cell allows the virus to infect the cell, replicate, and give rise to many progeny viruses. These viruses can then infect many neighboring cells.

1 minute 8 seconds
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