Metabolic changes in Toxoplasma gondii -infected host cells measured by autofluorescence imaging.

Autor: Gallego-López GM; Morgridge Institute for Research, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.; Department of Medical Microbiology & Immunology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA., Contreras Guzman E; Morgridge Institute for Research, Madison, Wisconsin, USA., Desa DE; Morgridge Institute for Research, Madison, Wisconsin, USA., Knoll LJ; Department of Medical Microbiology & Immunology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA., Skala MC; Morgridge Institute for Research, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.; Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: MBio [mBio] 2024 Aug 14; Vol. 15 (8), pp. e0072724. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jul 08.
DOI: 10.1128/mbio.00727-24
Abstrakt: Toxoplasma gondii, the causative agent of toxoplasmosis, is an obligate intracellular parasite that infects warm-blooded vertebrates across the world. In humans, seropositivity rates of T. gondii range from 10% to 90% across communities. Despite its prevalence, few studies address how T. gondii infection changes the metabolism of host cells. In this study, we investigate how T. gondii manipulates the host cell metabolic environment by monitoring the metabolic response over time using noninvasive autofluorescence lifetime imaging of single cells, metabolite analysis, extracellular flux analysis, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Autofluorescence lifetime imaging indicates that infected host cells become more oxidized and have an increased proportion of bound NAD(P)H compared to uninfected controls. Over time, infected cells also show decreases in levels of intracellular glucose and lactate, increases in oxygen consumption, and variability in ROS production. We further examined changes associated with the pre-invasion "kiss and spit" process using autofluorescence lifetime imaging, which also showed a more oxidized host cell with an increased proportion of bound NAD(P)H over 48 hours compared to uninfected controls, suggesting that metabolic changes in host cells are induced by T. gondii kiss and spit even without invasion.IMPORTANCEThis study sheds light on previously unexplored changes in host cell metabolism induced by T. gondii infection using noninvasive, label-free autofluorescence imaging. In this study, we use optical metabolic imaging (OMI) to measure the optical redox ratio (ORR) in conjunction with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) to noninvasively monitor single host cell response to T. gondii infection over 48 hours. Collectively, our results affirm the value of using autofluorescence lifetime imaging to noninvasively monitor metabolic changes in host cells over the time course of a microbial infection. Understanding this metabolic relationship between the host cell and the parasite could uncover new treatment and prevention options for T. gondii infections worldwide.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Databáze: MEDLINE