Dear Colleagues,
Parasites are a fascinating example of adaptation due to their complex strategies of colonization and invasion. They can exploit diverse mechanisms to alter host behavior that facilitates their establishment, growth, reproduction and in consequence their transmission. Additionally, these organisms play an important role in ecological interactions and ecosystem adjustment. In the host, the parasite can alter the environment through the inflammatory response, causing either damage or apoptosis in specific places or taking advantage of the neuroimmunoendocrine network of the host, turning a hostile environment into a facilitative one, conducive to their establishment, growth and reproduction into an immunocompetitive host. On the other hand, the host responds to the parasite throughout immune activation, and, can alter physiology of the other systems (nervous, endocrine) by this chronic activation. We will receive articles in this Special Issue dealing in some detail with work on the molecular changes of the host in response to parasite infection, as well as the role of these molecular changes in inducing behavioral changes on the host, including aggressive, reproductive, learning and cognitive behaviors during the course of infection. Also, manuscripts dealing with applications that these molecular changes may have in the drug design against parasitic infections are welcome.
Dr. Jorge Morales-Montor and Dr. Valeria Vargas-Ponce de León
Guest Editors
Manuscripts should be submitted via our online editorial system at https://imr.propub.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to start your submission. Manuscripts can be submitted now or up until the deadline. All papers will go through peer-review process. Accepted papers will be published in the journal (as soon as accepted) and meanwhile listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, reviews as well as short communications are preferred. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office to announce on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts will be thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. Please visit the Instruction for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) in this open access journal is 2500 USD. Submitted manuscripts should be well formatted in good English.