This is scientific American 60 second science.

I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

The whip worm is a parasite that infects half a billion people around the world.

It lives in the gut, burying its head in the large intestine,

causing symptoms like nausea, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. But the worms place of residence

also reveals a potential weakness. The parasite needs to steal some of our own

gut bacteria to thrive. It takes them from the host and then bends it, it seems, to

generate a population which suits itself.

Richard Grunces is an immunoparisatologist at the University of Manchester in the UK.

So if they have bacteria, then they survive, if they don't have bacteria, they didn't survive.

If they don't have bacteria, they didn't survive.

Grunse and his team studied that phenomenon in mice,

because yes, there's a type of whipworm adapted to them too.

And they found that when whipworms hatch they acquire a fresh microbiome,

derived from the host's own microbiome, but with different proportions of species.

Without that host contribution, the worms die.

But the worms also induce changes in the host's

microbiome, tweaking it so the gut is no longer hospitable

to hatching.

Now you'd have to ask, well, that seems a little bit paradoxical because maybe the parasite wants to have more of it establishing rather than less.

But here's the catch. Go on a hatching spree and the host's immune system is going to take notice and kick all the worms out.

If the eggs don't hatch as effectively because the parasites altered the gut, you don't get as many new worms coming in

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