Hijacking of host mitochondria by Toxoplasma gondii and SARS-CoV-2.

Mitochondria regulate energy production, cell cycle, and immune signaling. Li et al. recently reported that Toxoplasma gondii induces the shedding of mitochondrial outer membrane to promote its growth. Intriguingly, the hijacking of host mitochondria has been shown to play an essential role in the pathogenesis of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

An Open-Source Toolkit To Expand Bioinformatics Training in Infectious Diseases.

As access to high-throughput sequencing technology has increased, the bottleneck in biomedical research has shifted from data generation to data analysis. Here, we describe a modular and extensible framework for didactic instruction in bioinformatics using publicly available RNA sequencing data sets from infectious disease studies, with a focus on host-parasite interactions. We highlight lessons learned from adapting this course for virtual learners during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.