toxo ... because it's cute

a friend of mine is nearing the end of her phd work on toxoplasma, and so when we visited her this weekend i made her this.

it's a little toxo! fortunately i have some infectious disease specialists as friends, who advised me to make a crescent-ish shaped creature. the pattern is inspired by some knitted bacteria that i found on ravelry.com, but was in its details was completely made up. i crocheted it since i'm better able to manipulate crochet for little creatures like this.

note the stripes spiralling down from it's head. toxo has an apical complex of actin fibers/microtubules that apparently spiral around the little protozoa. it uses these microtubules to pull itself along. it's hard to see the apical spiral complex with these pics. i also chose a stripe yarn that was kinda close in color so that they would be more subtle than in-your-face - think of it more of a suggestion of microtubules rather than an accurate depiction. the eyes are safety eyes (thanks beth) which i haven't used before, but certainly would be hard (impossible) to get off.

yarn: berroco air (body) and noro aurora (stripes)
pattern: self-created