The Toxoplasma gondii rhoptry protein Rop2 was expressed in Escherichia coli as a fusion protein containing 44 kDa of the 55-kDa mature Rop2, supplied with six histidyl residues at the N-terminal end (Rop2196-561). Humoral response during Toxoplasma infection of humans was analyzed by immunoglobulin G (IgG), IgA, and IgM enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay with Rop2196-561 as the antigen substrat...

Root hair tip growth provides a unique model system for the study of plant cell polarity. Transgenic plants expressing constitutively active (CA) forms of ROP (Rho-of-plants) GTPases have been shown to cause the disruption of root hair polarity likely as a result of the alteration of actin filaments (AF) and microtubules (MT) organization. Towards understanding the mechanism by which ROP contro...

Phosphatidic acid (PA) level increases during various stress conditions. However, the physiological roles of this lipid in stress response remain largely unknown. In this study, we report that PA induced leaf cell death and elevated the levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the whole leaf and single cells. To further elucidate the mechanism of PA-induced cell death, we then examined whethe...

I ntracellular parasitism defines the most intimate of interactions between a pathogen and host. Inherent in this equation are the needs of the pathogen to enter the cell and establish a replication-permissive niche while neutralizing and subverting cellular defenses. The protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii is particularly adept at every stage of intracellular parasitism, which has contributed...

Toxoplasma gondii replicates within a specialized vacuole surrounded by the parasitophorous vacuole membrane (PVM). The PVM forms intimate interactions with host mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in a process termed PVM-organelle association. In this study we identify a likely mediator of this process, the parasite protein ROP2. ROP2, which is localized to the PVM, is secreted from an...

Toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular parasite for which the discharge of apical organelles named rhoptries is a key event in host cell invasion. Among rhoptry proteins, ROP2, which is the prototype of a large protein family, is translocated in the parasitophorous vacuole membrane during invasion. The ROP2 family members are related to protein-kinases, but only some of them are predict...

Background The severe damages of toxoplasmosis clearly indicate the need for the development of a more effective vaccine. Immunization with plasmid DNA is a promising vaccination technique. Therefore, GRA7 plasmid was prepared to be used as a vaccine. The purpose of this study was evaluation of immunization with cocktail DNA vaccine including plasmids encoding Toxoplasma gondii ROP2 and GRA7 in...

Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular obligate protozoan, which infects humans and warm-blooded animals. The aim of the present study was to clone the rop2, gra5 and gra7 genes from T. gondii RH strain and to produce recombinant proteins. The rop2, gra5 and gra7 gene fragments produced by polymerase chain reaction were cloned into the pET102/D-TOPO vector which contains thioredoxin and polyhist...

objective: toxoplasma gondii is an obligate intracellular protozoan that causes toxoplasmosis in human and animal. in recent years, significant progress has been made in the identification of vaccine candidates which can induce protective responses. in this study we used complete rhoptry protein 2 gene of toxoplasma gondii as a single dna vaccine and evaluated its immune responses in comparison...

The efficacy of vaccination with Toxoplasma gondii recombinant GRA4 (rGRA4) and ROP2 (rRPO2) proteins and a mix of both combined with alum were evaluated in C57BL/6 and C3H mice. In C57BL/6 mice, rGRA4 and rGRA4-rROP2 immunizations generated similar levels of immunoglobulin G1 (IgG1) and IgG2a isotypes against GRA4, whereas immunizations with rROP2 and the mix induced a predominant IgG1 product...