Home > Scientists > 2023 > Pantalius Nji Che
Pantalius Nji Che
He/Him
The Human Bug Destroyer!
Musculoskeletal Health
Pantalius's Notable career moments
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I started teaching in secondary school and started studying micro-organisms for my master’s degree.
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I became the school principal.
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I started working in working in a medical laboratory specialized in testing for the disease, tuberculosis.
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Got a scholarship grant to study how the malaria parasite infects the female Anopheles stephensi mosquito.
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Got a PhD scholarship grant to study the relationship between gut microorganisms and bone health in children.
About Pantalius Nji Che
Did you know that there are millions of tiny bugs living in your body and eating your food?
They eat some of your food every time you eat. Some of them are nice and make you strong, but others are very mean and make you ill.
When I fell sick as a child and was taken to the hospital, the doctor would give me some medicine and tell me it was to remove the bugs that were making me ill. This always puzzled me because I had never seen any of these bugs before. I later learned that these bugs were not insects that I was used to seeing, like butterflies or grasshoppers, these bugs were called microbes, bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Also, I had never seen these microbes because they were so tiny and could only be seen by using a very powerful microscope. Then I decided to study more about these bugs to know the good ones from the bad ones and how to destroy the bad ones and protect the good ones.
We have more than 100 million-bazillion bugs living on our body, the trouble is that we can only study a few of them at a time. Right now, I am studying those ones which live in the stomachs of little children to see how it affects their bones, either making them stronger or weaker. As you know, if your bones are weak, they will break even if you play a little – and that can be so painful. It would be exciting to identify the bad guys that are responsible for making our bones weak. In that way, I will be able to tell the doctors which bad bugs to kill and which ones to protect. This will help more children to have strong bones and play for as long as they like.