{"doi":"10.1101/2021.11.10.468098","title":"IFN-γ stimulated murine and human neurons mount anti-parasitic defenses against the intracellular parasite <i>Toxoplasma gondii</i>","abstract":"Summary Dogma holds that Toxoplasma gondii persists in neurons because neurons cannot clear intracellular parasites, even with IFN-γ stimulation. As several recent studies questioned this idea, we used primary murine neuronal cultures from wild-type and transgenic mice in combination with IFN-γ stimulation and parental and transgenic parasites to reassess IFN-γ dependent neuronal clearance of intracellular parasites. We found that neurons respond to IFN-γ and that a subset of neurons clear intracellular parasites via immunity regulated GTPases. Whole neuron reconstructions from mice infected with parasites that trigger neuron GFP expression only after full invasion revealed that ∼40% of these T. gondii -invaded neurons no longer harbor parasites. Finally, IFN-γ stimulated human stem cell derived neurons showed a ∼ 50% decrease in parasite infection rate when compared to unstimulated cultures. This work highlights the capability of human and murine neurons to mount cytokine-dependent anti- T. gondii defense mechanisms in vitro and in vivo .","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":227530,"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":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9502,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":831457,"name":"Joshua A. Kochanowsky","orcid":"0000-0001-7260-3159","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":582325,"name":"Emily F. Merritt","orcid":"0000-0002-9449-4683","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":230433,"name":"J. S. Lagas","orcid":"0000-0002-9555-289X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":831852,"name":"Ayesha Swannigan","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":329097,"name":"Anita A. Koshy","orcid":"0000-0001-8705-3233","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":831456,"name":"Sambamurthy Chandrasekaran","orcid":"0000-0002-2443-2794","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":64,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:54:42.179886Z","pmid":null,"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":[]}