{"id":245106,"date":"2026-10-09T02:47:34","date_gmt":"2026-10-09T07:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/harmless-amoebas-tight-space-crawling-offers-clues-to-how-its-deadly-relative-invades-the-brain"},"modified":"2026-10-09T02:47:34","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T07:47:34","slug":"harmless-amoebas-tight-space-crawling-offers-clues-to-how-its-deadly-relative-invades-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/harmless-amoebas-tight-space-crawling-offers-clues-to-how-its-deadly-relative-invades-the-brain","title":{"rendered":"Harmless amoeba\u2019s tight-space crawling offers clues to how its deadly relative invades the brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/harmless-amoebas-tight-space-crawling-offers-clues-to-how-its-deadly-relative-invades-the-brain3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Tiny, shapeless invaders can find their way from ponds to the human brain and cause an infection so severe that it has a 95% fatality rate. The amoeba Naegleria fowleri naturally lives in ponds, feasting on bacteria, but once it enters the human body, it makes a run for the brain tissue, traversing complex, tight spaces to reach its destination.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2534165123\" target=\"_blank\">recent study<\/a> set out to crack the secret of how a tiny amoeba steers itself through unfamiliar terrain without any guide.<\/p>\n<p>Researchers built a microscopic obstacle course for the amoebas and filmed their every move, tracking how they squeeze through tight spaces and tackle different environments. They identified a few core mechanisms behind their navigational success. First, a love for tight spaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tiny, shapeless invaders can find their way from ponds to the human brain and cause an infection so severe that it has a 95% fatality rate. The amoeba Naegleria fowleri naturally lives in ponds, feasting on bacteria, but once it enters the human body, it makes a run for the brain tissue, traversing complex, tight [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}