Phenotypes Associated with Knockouts of Eight Dense Granule Gene Loci (GRA2-9) in Virulent Toxoplasma gondii
Abstract
Toxoplasma gondii actively invades host cells and establishes a parasitophorous vacuole (PV) that accumulates many proteins secreted by the dense granules (GRA proteins). To date, at least 23 GRA proteins have been reported, though the function(s) of most of these proteins still remains unknown. We targeted gene knockouts at ten GRA gene loci (GRA1-10) to investigate the cellular roles and essentiality of these classical GRA proteins during acute infection in the virulent type I RH strain. While eight of these genes (GRA2-9) were successfully knocked out, targeted knockouts at the GRA1 and GRA10 loci were not obtained, suggesting these GRA proteins may be essential. As expected, the Delta gra2 and Delta gra6 knockouts failed to form an intravacuolar network (IVN). Surprisingly, Delta gra7 exhibited hyper-formation of the IVN in both normal and lipid-free growth conditions. No morphological alterations were identified in parasite or PV structures in the Delta gra3, Delta gra4, Delta gra5, Delta gra8, or Delta gra9 knockouts. With the exception of the Delta gra3 and Delta gra8 knockouts, all of the GRA knockouts exhibited defects in their infection rate in vitro. While the single GRA knockouts did not exhibit reduced replication rates in vitro, replication rate defects were observed in three double GRA knockout strains (Delta gra4 Delta gra6,Delta gra3 Delta gra5 and Delta gra3 Delta gra7). However, the virulence of single or double GRA knockout strains in CD1 mice was not affected. Collectively, our results suggest that while the eight individual GRA proteins investigated in this study (GRA2-9) are not essential, several GRA proteins may provide redundant and potentially important functions during acute infection.