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Eukaryotic Cell, April 2009, p. 425, Vol. 8, No. 4
1535-9778/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/EC.00065-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

SPOTLIGHT

Article of Significant Interest Selected from This Issue by the Editors

Gene Targeting in Toxoplasma Gets Ramped Up

The protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii has emerged as a superb model for the study of intracellular pathogens, including many medically important parasites from the phylum Apicomplexa, but a high frequency of nonhomologous recombination and random insertion of targeting episomes has hampered the ability to efficiently target gene disruptions at specific genetic loci. Fox et al. (p. 520-529) demonstrate that disruption of a KU80 gene functionally deletes a significant nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) double-strand break DNA repair pathway, providing the first conclusive evidence of a functional NHEJ pathway in a protozoan. Due to NHEJ deficiency, KU80 knockouts now provide a genetic background with a very high gene-targeting frequency that enables the efficient development of gene knockouts, allelic replacements, multiply manipulated strains, and direct gene-tagging approaches to dissect parasite biology. These results now suggest that a high-throughput approach is feasible for the systematic disruption of all predicted T. gondii genes, many of which are uniquely found in obligate intracellular parasites from the phylum Apicomplexa and play as yet poorly defined roles in parasite biology and host interaction.

Eukaryotic Cell, April 2009, p. 425, Vol. 8, No. 4
1535-9778/09/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/EC.00065-09
Copyright © 2009, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.




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