Toxoplasma Co-opts Host Cells It Does Not Invade

PLoS Pathogens

Anita A. Koshy¹  David A. Christian¹  Anjali J. Shastri²  Christopher A. Hunter²  Hans K. Dietrich³  Jason H. Melehani⁴  John C. Boothroyd⁴ 

[1] Department of Medicine (Infectious Disease), Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America;Department of Microbiology & Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America;Department of Neurology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America;Department of Pathobiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America

关键词: Parasitic diseases;    Toxoplasma;    Host cells;    Cell cycle;    cell division;    Fluorescence microscopy;    Cell staining;    Fluorescence imaging;    Neurons;   

DOI  :  10.1371/journal.ppat.1002825

学科分类：生物科学（综合）

来源: Public Library of Science

【 摘 要 】

Like many intracellular microbes, the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii injects effector proteins into cells it invades. One group of these effector proteins is injected from specialized organelles called the rhoptries, which have previously been described to discharge their contents only during successful invasion of a host cell. In this report, using several reporter systems, we show that in vitro the parasite injects rhoptry proteins into cells it does not productively invade and that the rhoptry effector proteins can manipulate the uninfected cell in a similar manner to infected cells. In addition, as one of the reporter systems uses a rhoptry:Cre recombinase fusion protein, we show that in Cre-reporter mice infected with an encysting Toxoplasma-Cre strain, uninfected-injected cells, which could be derived from aborted invasion or cell-intrinsic killing after invasion, are actually more common than infected-injected cells, especially in the mouse brain, where Toxoplasma encysts and persists. This phenomenon has important implications for how Toxoplasma globally affects its host and opens a new avenue for how other intracellular microbes may similarly manipulate the host environment at large.

【 授权许可】

CC BY