Anemia is a common complication in many infectious diseases, including protozoan parasitic infections. Trypanosomes are eukaryotic parasites and most relevant human trypanosome pathogens are Trypanosoma brucei and Trypanosoma cruzi. Autoimmunity during Trypanosoma brucei infection is indicated to have a role during anemia, but anemia caused by trypanosome infection is poorly understood. In mouse models...

Exosomes mediate intercellular communication by transporting substrates with a variety of functions related to tissue homeostasis and disease. Recently, a subset of exosomes was labeled as defensosomes that are assembled during bacterial infection. Defensosomes mediate host defense by binding and inhibiting pore-forming toxins secreted by bacterial pathogens through incorporating protein receptors...

To investigate the causal relationship between SARS-CoV-2 infection and gut microbiome dysbiosis, researchers inoculated K18-hACE2 male mice with one of four doses (10, 100, 1000, and 104 PFU) of SARS-CoV-2 or mock treatment diluted in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). Fecal samples were collected from mice daily for microbiome analyses from day 0 (before infection) until sacrifice on days 5–7. Upon...

Helminth colonization has been associated with altered composition of the gut microbiota, such as increases in Clostridia. However, it is unclear if specific bacterial species display differential effects on helminth reproduction. This study isolated and sequenced the genome of 13 Clostridia from the Orang Asli, an indigenous population in Malaysia with a high prevalence of helminth infections. Metagenomic...

Adipose tissue macrophages (ATMs) change during metabolic stress and are thought to contribute to metabolic syndrome. This study examined ATM subpopulations in steady state and in response to nutritional and infectious challenges. They characterized the epididymal white adipose tissue (eWAT) lymphoid and myeloid cell populations under steady state using RNA sequencing to analyze the transcriptome of...

This dataset includes microscopy images from paraffin embedding hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) as well as immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining for cleaved caspase-3, CD3 and CD11b. For these experiments, 6-8 week-old male and female mice from WT, Mavs+/- and Mavs-/- background were infected with 1E5 PFU of chikungunya virus (CHIKV), or mock-infected with heat-inactivated inoculum or PBS. Cardiac tissue...

This study combined multiple techniques (e.g., RNAscope in-situ hybridization, immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, single-cell RNA sequencing, bulk RNA sequencing, and functional assays) to investigate the inflammatory response associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection in human vascular tissues. Single cell RNA-sequencing data obtained from samples collected for this study is available via the Gene...

Microsporidia are obligate intracellular pathogens that infect a wide range of invertebrate and vertebrate hosts, including humans. In humans, microsporidia most often infect the gastrointestinal tract and cause diarrheal diseases, but in immunocompromised patients, infections can be fatal. Previous knowledge of microsporidian intracellular development was based on 2D transmission electron microscopy...

Microsporidia are obligate intracellular parasites that use an unusual invasion organelle called the polar tube (PT), which is ejected from a dormant spore at ultra-fast speeds, to infect host cells. This study used serial block-face scanning electron microscopy (SBF-SEM) to capture 3-dimensional snapshots of Anncaliia algerae spores in different states of the PT ejection process. They proposed a theoretical...