Microbe Watch

We are infection biologists who use artificial intelligence to help interpret our results from experiments in microbiology and immunology. We need your help to make our analysis better!

At the Host-Toxoplasma Interaction Laboratory at the University of Birmingham, we research how cells behave when they are infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii. Toxoplasma is the most common human parasitic infection and can sometimes cause serious complications in immunocompromised individuals (e.g. people taking medicine which suppresses their immune system following an organ transplant, and people with HIV/AIDS), so it is an important organism to study.

Our experiments generate a LOT of data - 1000s of images per experiment! To help us process them, we use an automated platform called HRMAn. It is already very useful, however we need to improve the consensus of whether the cell is attacking Toxoplasma with defence proteins or not. In other words, the more people who help us to teach HRMAn whether the cell is attacking the protein or not, the closer we will get to accurately analysing our data!

HRMAn is open-source, meaning anyone can download and use it for free. This means that your classifications will help facilitate not only our research, but the research of scientists all over the world! This will help bring us closer to understanding infectious diseases and how to treat them more effectively.