{"doi":"10.1017/s0031182020001249","title":"Strain-specific disruption of interferon-stimulated N-myc and STAT interactor (NMI) function by <i>Toxoplasma gondii</i> type I ROP18 in human cells","abstract":"Toxoplasma gondii rhoptry protein TgROP18 is a polymorphic virulence effector that targets immunity-related GTPases (IRGs) in rodents. Given that IRGs are uniquely diversified in rodents and not in other T. gondii intermediate hosts, the role of TgROP18 in manipulating non-rodent cells is unclear. Here we show that in human cells TgROP18I interacts with the interferon-gamma-inducible protein N-myc and STAT interactor (NMI) and that this is a property that is unique to the type I TgROP18 allele. Specifically, when expressed ectopically in mammalian cells only TgROP18I co-immunoprecipitates with NMI in IFN-γ-treated cells, while TgROP18II does not. In parasites expressing TgROP18I or TgROP18II, NMI only co-immunoprecipitates with TgROP18I and this is associated with allele-specific immunolocalization of NMI on the parasitophorous vacuolar membrane (PVM). We also found that TgROP18I reduces NMI association with IFN-γ-activated sequences (GAS) in the IRF1 gene promoter. Finally, we determined that polymorphisms in the C-terminal kinase domain of TgROP18I are required for allele-specific effects on NMI. Together, these data further define new host pathway targeted by TgROP18I and provide the first function driven by allelic differences in the highly polymorphic ROP18 locus.","journal":"Parasitology","year":2020,"id":115065,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9597,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":453230,"name":"Matthew L. Blank","orcid":"0000-0002-6641-5976","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":539689,"name":"Lijuan Zhou","orcid":"0000-0002-7720-4138","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":540616,"name":"Shuizhen Wu","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":539690,"name":"Hong‐Juan Peng","orcid":"0000-0002-9345-8218","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":388517,"name":"Jon P. Boyle","orcid":"0000-0003-0000-9243","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":539688,"name":"Jing Xia","orcid":"0000-0002-7590-4544","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":56,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:13:33.226937Z","pmid":"32729455","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}