Alive and Ticking: Trypanosoma brucei Assaults the Circadian Clocks.

Rijo-Ferreira et al. report alterations of circadian rhythmicity at the behavioral, tissue, cellular, and molecular levels in mice after Trypanosoma brucei infection, showing that targeting cell clocks is a specific feature of these parasites. Thus, African trypanosomes cause a severe disease by disrupting time-keeping mechanisms and their synchrony.