BoP 2025 has officially ended! Students got their official certificates this morning and had the opportunity to say a few words. We are grateful for all the work that was put in to make this course possible and we are proud to be part of the BoP alumni network 🥳 #MBLBoP2025

BoP 2025 Class Photo! #MBLBoP2025

It’s the final countdown for the final day of lab work for BoP! #MBLBoP2025

Today Camila Coelho joined us as the final speaker for BoP 2025! She talked to us about vaccines, parasites, and the fantastic work her lab is doing! Thank you to all the guest speakers who joined us to teach and get to know this year’s class/instructors/TAs/CAs! #MBLBoP2025

Only so many hours left of lab work and time to present our posters! #MBLBoP2025

Our penultimate guest lecturer Kirk Jensen is here this morning telling us about Toxo, its different strains and virulence, and the impact of mouse and parasite genetics! 🐭 #MBLBoP2025

Fernanda Novais was our morning speaker and we learned about T cells, cutaneous leishmaniasis, and Hypoxia! #MBLBoP2025

We are fortune this year to have had three course directors! Our current and final fearless leader this year is Melissa Lodoen who studies Toxo gondii infection 🧠 This is Vern and Melissa’s final year as course directors for BoP! #MBLBoP2025

This morning we had Irah King come talk to us about Type II immunity/Helminths, and now has joined us at the bench this evening to help with some Ascaris work! 🪱 #MBLBoP2025

Last week we started our final module, Immunology! After a great introduction to the topic by Phillip Scott, students broke into Team Ascaris, led by Pedro Gazzinelli, and Team Leishmania, led by Jude Uzonna! Pictures of full days and many great lecturers incoming! #MBLBoP202

The big reveal of our BoP 2025 t-shirts! What do folks recognize in the design? Created by the talented BoP student Sophia Hernandez! #MBLBoP2025

Thank you to Dr. Alan Sher for this evenings Englund Lecture! A personal and BoP History, the renaissance of parasitology (and immunoparasitology), and some cake to celebrate the 45th anniversary of BoP! #MBLBoP2025

Dr. Alan Sher will give the Paul Englund Endowed Lecture at BoP at 5pm eastern time. Please email mlodoen[at]uci[dot]edu if you would like a zoom link for the talk!

Nsa Dada was our morning lecturer and told us about her work with the mosquito microbiome! 🦟 #MBLBoP2025

David Sasseri joined us virtually for an introduction to symbiosis and then a focus down on Wolbachia 🪳🕷️🩸🦠 #MBLBoP2025

BoP 2025 cohort! #MBLBoP2025

This morning the BoP students get a hundred year overview of “sleeping sickness” from Isabel Roditi #MBLBoP2025

Practicing microinjections on ticks! Soon we’ll be injecting double stranded RNA for a gene knockdown experiment 🔬 PC: Alessandro R. #MBLBoP2025

Katie Gondim joins us this morning to teach us about the “kissing bug” Rhodnius prolixus, a vector insect #MBLBoP2025

Cell Biology Module complete! BBQ time! #MBLBoP2025

Etymology word of the day with our speaker and co-director Vern! Parasite: from the Greek ‘Parasitos’ meaning: “one who eats at the table of another” #MBLBoP2025

After every new speaker's lecture, the BoP class gets the opportunity to ask the speaker questions (without faculty, TA, CA, etc) and they range from career and personal advice, how the course has changed their lives, and the hardships of research and academia! #MBLBoP2025

Learning about the history and use of Expansion Microscopy with Sabrina Absalon for our morning lecture #MBLBoP2025

Megan and Michael with the Cape Cod Mosquito Control Project took their module out to collect wild mosquitos (and horseflies)! #MBLBoP2025

On the hunt for wild planaria! #MBLBoP2025

Late night pupa picking #MBLBoP2025

Some of the students are getting trained to use the confocal for imaging our respective parasites of interest #MBLBoP2025

Lecture today by Katy Ralston on entamoeba! Learning about the awesome process of amoeba “nibbling” #MBLBoP2025

Thinking of targets during the life cycle of malaria for drug development with Meg Phillips this morning #MBLBoP2025

A night of scope work! 🐌🦟 #MBLBoP2025

Let’s go to the beach (and find some parasites)! Featuring “Dan the Horseshoe crab man” 🐌🦀 #MBLBoP2025 #HorseshoeCrabs

Second lecture for the day focusing on heart worms “…stuff happens in the mosquito…” according to this life cycle. #MBLBoP2025

One example of great networking from BoP! #MBLBoP2025

Schistosome peristalsis! #MBLBoP2025

We got worms! #Schistosomes #MBLBoP2025

Everything is the FLAGELLUM! #MBLBoP2025

Starting the weekend off with some Trypanosome lecture! #MBLBoP2025

Mosquito subgroup burning the near midnight oil #MBLBoP2025

Mosquito larvae with Michael from the Pove Lab 🦟 #MBLBoP2025

The molecular bench work and microscopy in the dueling modules #MBLBoP2025

Okay sharks! Time to decide which of the two cell biology modules you’re going to take! 🦟 🪱 #MBLBoP2025

Flatworm reproduction and why schistosomes are the exception 🪱 #MBLBoP2025

Onto Module 2 with our fearless leader! #MBLBoP2025

End of Module 1 complete! Some celebration before BBQ #MBLBoP2025

We’re nearing the end of our Bioinformatics Module with our two awesome instructors Omar and Kathryn! We spent our final day of the module learning about and working with Single-cell RNA seq data #MBLBoP2025

Welcome to the Biology of Parasitism course Bluesky! The course has posted on X/Twitter over the years but we wanted to expand. Follow along with us for the class of 2025 using #MBLBoP2025 as we spend the next 7-weeks learning all the things parasites! Posts this year are by @rayallen.bsky.social