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Impact of Equilibrative Nucleoside Transporters on Toxoplasma gondii Infection and Differentiation
Open accessPreprint — published as 10.1128/mbio.02207-25
Abstract
Toxoplasma gondii cannot synthesize purines de novo and must import them; yet, the functional interplay among its four equilibrative nucleoside transporters (ENTs) homologs remains unclear. We systematically deconstructed this network by combining CRISPR-Cas9 knockouts with an auxin-inducible degron. Across all phenotypic assays, tachyzoite replication, nucleoside-analogue sensitivity, alkaline-stress–induced differentiation, and murine cyst formation, the Δ TgENT2 strain was indistinguishable from the parental line, indicating that TgENT2 is dispensable under the conditions tested. In contrast, the double mutant Δ TgAT1ΔTgENT3 exhibited delayed bradyzoite differentiation in vitro and produced smaller brain cysts in vivo. This double deletion triggered a ∼3-fold transcriptional up-regulation of TgENT1 , whose product we partially localized to the plant-like vacuolar compartment (PLVAC). Conditional depletion of TgENT1 caused complete intracellular growth arrest, PLVAC swelling, and a purine-starvation-like transcriptomic program enriched for nucleoside phosphatases and cyclic-nucleotide phosphodiesterases. These findings reveal a compensatory salvage pathway in which the parasite reroutes purine acquisition through a vacuolar route when plasma-membrane import is compromised. Although this adaptation sustains tachyzoite proliferation, it fails during the energetically demanding transition to bradyzoites, creating a metabolic bottleneck that impairs chronic infection. Our work reveals an adaptable yet ultimately limited purine-import network and identifies TgENT1, along with the vacuolar salvage axis it mediates, as a promising therapeutic target for blocking lifelong toxoplasmosis.
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![Fig 7 Transcriptomic response to acute TgENT1 depletion reveals a progressive, purine-centric stress program. TgENT1-mAID-HA tachyzoites (three biological replicates) were pre-treated for 48 h with vehicle or 500 µM IAA, then allowed to invade fresh Hs27 monolayers under the same conditions and harvested 24 h (day 1) or 48 h (day 2) after invasion. Poly(A) RNA was sequenced (Illumina NovaSeq; 150 bp PE), reads were mapped to the GT1 genome, and differential expression was analyzed with DESeq2 (|log₂FC| ≥ 1; false discovery rate [FDR] < 0.01). (A) Principal-component analysis (PCA). PC1 (40%) cleanly separates treated from control samples, whereas PC2 (28%) differentiates time points, indicating a robust, time-dependent transcriptional shift upon TgENT1 knockdown. (B) Heat map of the 50 most variable genes. Z-scored expression values highlight a concerted upregulation of purine- and nitrogen-metabolism genes (reds) and downregulation of cytoskeletal/motility genes (blues) that intensifies from day 1 to day 2. (C) Volcano plots of differentially expressed genes. Pink, upregulated; blue, downregulated; gray, non-significant. The magnitude and number of responsive genes expand markedly by day 2. The complete list of genes and fold change is presented in Table S4. (D) Overlap of DE genes between time points. Venn diagrams show 96 genes upregulated at both day 1 and day 2, and 58 genes consistently downregulated, underscoring a core TgENT1-dependent regulon that is sustained and amplified over time. (E) Functional enrichment analysis. Dot plot of the top gene ontology/KEGG terms (size = gene count; color = –log₁₀FDR). Upregulated sets are dominated by purine metabolism, nitrogen-compound metabolism, and cyano-/taurine-derivative pathways, whereas downregulated sets are enriched for microtubule-based movement and related processes, consistent with a shift from proliferation to metabolic stress response.](/paper-figures/7fb1c4e8a8ae4d7ba13e1607dbe6021d/impact-of-equilibrative-nucleoside-transporters-on-i-toxoplasma-gondii-i-figure-7.jpg)
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Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
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Metadata
- Authors
- Messina, G., Goerner, A., Bennett, C., Brennan, E., Carruthers, V. B., & Di Genova, B. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Vermont (US)
- University of Michigan (US)
- Venue
- mBio
- Publisher
- openRxiv
- Published
- 2024-07-10
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- e0220725-e0220725
- ISSN
- 2150-7511 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC12607627
- OpenAlex
- W4414660301
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 1
- FWCI
- 6.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- mBio (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (P20GM125498)
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R21AI180278)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Immunology and Microbiology › Parasitology › Toxoplasma gondii Research Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Biochemical and Molecular Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Trypanosoma species research and implications
- Keywords
- Toxoplasma gondii, equilibrative nucleoside transporter, purine salvage pathway, bradyzoite differentiation, alkaline stress, CRISPR/Cas9 knockout, auxin-inducible degron, antiparasitic drug targets
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Toxoplasma, Toxoplasmosis, Protozoan Proteins, Nucleoside Transport Proteins, Equilibrative Nucleoside Transport Proteins, Mice, CRISPR-Cas Systems
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- Messina, G., Goerner, A., Bennett, C., Brennan, E., Carruthers, V. B., & Di Genova, B. M. (2024). Impact of Equilibrative Nucleoside Transporters on Toxoplasma gondii Infection and Differentiation. mBio. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.10.601519