The amino acid requirements of the rediae of Cryptocotyle lingua and Himasthla leptosoma and of the sporocyst of Cercaria emasculans Pelseneer, 1900

Extract

Few workers have studied the amino acid requirement of larval Digenea in vivo. Cheng (1963) conducted a study of three species of parasites, each from a different host, and suggested that both free and bound host amino acids act as food sources. His assumptions are based on the disappearance of free amino acids from the sera of infected molluscs and the qualitative similarities between parasite and host with respect to both free and bound amino acids. Negus (1968), working on Turritella communis infected with the sporocysts of Cercaria doricha, described an almost identical qualitative composition of both the free amino acid pools and the hydrolysates of host gonad and parasite tissue. He was of the opinion that this was not coincidental. Considerable quantitative similarities between the free amino acids were also evident. Read, Rothman & Simmons (1963), in discussing cestode metabolism and membrane transport, proposed that it is the molar ratios of amino acids in the host which are important to the parasite and that the amino acid requirement may be more subtle than a simple need for certain components. Indeed, they suggest that this may form one basis for physiological host specificity.