Axenic Cultivation of the First Human-Derived Breviata anathema from a Patient with Fascioliasis in West Bengal, India
Sanjib Kumar Sardar, Ajanta Ghosal, Yumiko Saito-Nakano, Jun Suzuki, Sandipan Ganguly, Seiki Kobayashi · 2026
Read Axenic Cultivation of the First Human-Derived Breviata anathema from a Patient with Fascioliasis in West Bengal, India by Sanjib Kumar Sardar, Ajanta Ghosal, Yumiko Saito-Nakano, Jun Suzuki, Sandipan Ganguly, Seiki Kobayashi (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13407456.txt.
Description
Sanjib Kumar Sardar and co-authors report, in 2026, the first germ-free culture of a tiny free-living amoeba-flagellate taken from a person. The organism, Breviata anathema strain T76, came from a patient's stool in Kolkata, India. The patient had fascioliasis, a liver fluke infection. It is linked to eating pond plants, where the microbe also lives.
Gene sequencing matched T76 to a known free-living, bacteria-eating strain held in a culture collection. Growing it without any other living species proved the hard part; success came in a medium first designed for another gut amoeba, with alternative sugars swapped in as fuel. The team also observed cyst-like round bodies sheltering flagellated cells that survived strong acid, a trait that may help the organism persist outside a host. Pure culture opens the door to cleaner study of this rare lineage.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sanjib Kumar Sardar, Ajanta Ghosal, Yumiko Saito-Nakano, Jun Suzuki, Sandipan Ganguly, Seiki Kobayashi |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 17 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |