TgMORN1 Is a Key Organizer for the Basal Complex of Toxoplasma gondii

PLoS Pathogens

Aoife T. Heaslip¹  Ke Hu¹  Barry Stein¹  Florence Dzierszinski² 

[1] Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America;Institute of Parasitology, McGill University, Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Québec, Canada

关键词: Parasitic diseases;    Parasite replication;    Vacuoles;    Toxoplasma gondii;    Cytokinesis;    Cytoskeleton;    Malarial parasites;    Complement system;   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.ppat.1000754

学科分类：生物科学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

Toxoplasma gondii is a leading cause of congenital birth defects, as well as a cause for ocular and neurological diseases in humans. Its cytoskeleton is essential for parasite replication and invasion and contains many unique structures that are potential drug targets. Therefore, the biogenesis of the cytoskeletal structure of T. gondii is not only important for its pathogenesis, but also of interest to cell biology in general. Previously, we and others identified a new T. gondii cytoskeletal protein, TgMORN1, which is recruited to the basal complex at the very beginning of daughter formation. However, its function remained largely unknown. In this study, we generated a knock-out mutant of TgMORN1 (ΔTgMORN1) using a Cre-LoxP based approach. We found that the structure of the basal complex was grossly affected in ΔTgMORN1 parasites, which also displayed defects in cytokinesis. Moreover, ΔTgMORN1 parasites showed significant growth impairment in vitro, and this translated into greatly attenuated virulence in mice. Therefore, our results demonstrate that TgMORN1 is required for maintaining the structural integrity of the parasite posterior end, and provide direct evidence that cytoskeleton integrity is essential for parasite virulence and pathogenesis.

【 授权许可】

CC BY