Affiliation:
1. Department of Medical Microbiology & Immunology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The obligate intracellular parasite
Toxoplasma gondii
can infect and replicate in any warm-blooded cell tested to date, but much of our knowledge about
T. gondii
cell biology comes from just one host cell type: human foreskin fibroblasts (HFFs). To expand our knowledge of host–parasite lipid interactions, we studied
T. gondii
in intestinal epithelial cells, the first site of host–parasite contact following oral infection and the exclusive site of parasite sexual development in feline hosts. We found that highly metabolic Caco-2 cells are permissive to
T. gondii
growth even when treated with high levels of linoleic acid (LA), a polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) that kills parasites in HFFs. Caco-2 cells appear to sequester LA away from the parasite, preventing membrane disruptions and lipotoxicity that characterize LA-induced parasite death in HFFs. Our work is an important step toward understanding host–parasite interactions in feline intestinal epithelial cells, an understudied but important cell type in the
T. gondii
life cycle.
Funder
HHS | National Institutes of Health
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology