Billions are infected by a cat poop brain bug, but studying it is vexing researchers

What if I told you that there is a good chance you are carrying a parasite that is transmitted through cat poo? Two billion people around the world carry Toxoplasma gondii so there may be more than a 25 percent chance that it is in your body too. Toxoplasma is closely related to Plasmodium, the parasite that causes malaria. But while Plasmodium is quite fussy about where it lives, only able to survive in liver cells and then in red blood cells, Toxoplasma doesn’t much care. It muscles its way into just about any type of cell. But it’s also…

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