{"doi":"10.1128/msphere.00869-19","title":"<i>Toxoplasma</i> Cathepsin Protease B and Aspartyl Protease 1 Are Dispensable for Endolysosomal Protein Digestion","abstract":"Roughly one-third of the human population is chronically infected with the intracellular single-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii , but little is known about how this organism persists inside people. Previous research suggested that a parasite proteolytic enzyme, termed cathepsin protease L, is important for Toxoplasma persistence; however, it remained possible that other associated proteolytic enzymes could also be involved in the long-term survival of the parasite during infection. Here, we show that two proteolytic enzymes associated with cathepsin protease L play dispensable roles and are dependent on cathepsin L to reach maturity, which differs from the corresponding enzymes in humans. These findings establish a divergent hierarchy of proteases and help focus attention principally on cathepsin protease L as a potential target for interrupting Toxoplasma chronic infection.","journal":"mSphere","year":2020,"id":69620,"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":20,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9521,"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":368846,"name":"David W. Smith","orcid":"0000-0002-5158-0522","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":368847,"name":"Manlio Di Cristina","orcid":"0000-0003-4154-5210","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":370231,"name":"Geetha Kannan","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":318356,"name":"Zhicheng Dou","orcid":"0000-0003-1887-1181","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":368848,"name":"Vern B. Carruthers","orcid":"0000-0001-6859-8895","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":370230,"name":"Christian McDonald","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":44,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:42:48.813846Z","pmid":"32051238","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":[]}