Abstract
Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled eukaryotic parasite with a considerable host range that must invade the cells of warm-blooded hosts to survive and replicate. The challenges and opportunities that such a strategy represent have been met by the evolution of effectors that are delivered into host cells, counter host defences and co-opt host cell functions for their own purposes. These effectors are delivered in two waves using distinct machinery for each. In this Review, we focus on understanding the architecture of these protein-export systems and how their protein cargo is recognized and selected. We discuss the recent findings on the role that host manipulation has in latent Toxoplasma infections. We also discuss how these recent findings compare to protein export in the related Plasmodium spp. (the causative agent of malaria) and how this can inform our understanding of host manipulation in the larger Apicomplexa phylum and its evolution.
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Acknowledgements
We thank our funding sources, The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia (GNT2012271) to C.J.T. J.B. acknowledges The National Institutes of Health (NIH) USA (R01AI172823) and the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub. A.F. was supported by a NIH T32 training grant and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Gilliam Fellowship. We thank the past and present members of our respective groups who contributed much of the data and many of the ideas discussed here.
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S.S., A.F., J.B. and C.J.T. conceived and wrote the original draft and edited the paper. S.S. and C.J.T. prepared the figures.
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Seizova, S., Ferrel, A., Boothroyd, J. et al. Toxoplasma protein export and effector function. Nat Microbiol 9, 17–28 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-023-01563-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41564-023-01563-z
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