Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite responsible for toxoplasmosis, a lifelong chronic infection prevalent in about 30% of the human population. It poses little harm to healthy individuals but can result in severe consequences for immunocompromised people. If infection occurs during pregnancy, the parasite can cross the placenta and cause retinal or neurological issues in the developing fetus, and potentially death in severe cases.
There is currently no vaccine for Toxoplasma infection, and the biological mechanism by which the parasite affects the metabolism of host cells is still understudied. In new research published in the journal mBio , Morgridge researchers describe how Toxoplasma infection changes host cell metabolism over the course of infection using the power of optical metabolic imaging (OMI) for the first time. Assistant scientist Gina Gallego-Lopez, an alumna of the Morgridge Postdoctoral Fellow program and first author of the study, spearheaded this collaboration between her co-advisors, Morgridge Investigator in biomedical imaging Melissa Skala and UW–Madison professor in medical microbiology and immunology Laura Knoll.
The Knoll Lab focuses on studying T. gondii and other related parasites such as Entamoeba , while the Skala Lab develops biomedical imaging tools like OMI to monitor cellular activity. I have experience with parasites, but the field of optics was new for me.
I wanted to try imaging Toxoplasma gondii to see how it is affecting the metabolism of the.