{"doi":"10.1101/2024.03.22.586332","title":"Host cell-specific metabolism of linoleic acid controls <i>Toxoplasma gondii</i> growth in cell culture","abstract":"Abstract The obligate intracellular parasite Toxoplasma gondii can infect and replicate in any warm-blooded cell tested to date, but much of our knowledge about T. gondii cell biology comes from just one host cell type: human foreskin fibroblasts (HFFs). To expand our knowledge of host-parasite lipid interactions, we studied T. gondii in intestinal epithelial cells, the first site of host-parasite contact following oral infection and the exclusive site of parasite sexual development in feline hosts. We found that highly metabolic Caco-2 cells are permissive to T. gondii growth even when treated with high levels of linoleic acid (LA), a polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) that kills parasites in HFFs. Caco-2 cells appear to sequester LA away from the parasite, preventing membrane disruptions and lipotoxicity that characterize LA-induced parasite death in HFFs. Our work is an important step toward understanding host-parasite interactions in feline intestinal epithelial cells, an understudied but important cell type in the T. gondii life cycle.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2024,"id":490412,"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":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9576,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1284558,"name":"Caitlin Zinda","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1070482,"name":"Sung Chul Park","orcid":"0009-0008-9081-7992","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1143701,"name":"Martin T. Kelty","orcid":"0009-0007-1179-3623","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":319917,"name":"Laura J. Knoll","orcid":"0000-0002-9362-8088","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1222005,"name":"Nicole D. Hryckowian","orcid":"0000-0002-6602-6399","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:08:37.162700Z","pmid":"38562845","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":[]}