Nanolive is pleased to share a new publication in Nature Scientific Reports from our users in the Justus-Liebig University of Giessen [1].

Besnoitia besnoiti is an emerging parasite in Europe, responsible for bovine besnoitiosis, an illness causing a significant economic impact on cattle industry.

Similarly to T. gondii, already featured here, B. besnoiti also needs to scavenge cholesterol from its host cell in order to replicate. However, the mechanism used by B. besnoiti to obtain cholesterol is still controversial.

On this work, Silva and colleagues study the model of cholesterol salvage by analysing B. besnoiti infection of primary bovine endothelial cells in vivo.

Their results demonstrate that B. besnoiti can obtain cholesterol both via endogenous than exogenous uptake. This finding reinforces the theory that the successful B. besnoiti infections in primary bovine endothelial host cells rely on both the parasite and the cell type.

The 3D Cell Explorer- fluo was used to confirm the presence of abundant lipid droplet-like structures in B. besnoiti-infected cells. Images were later analyzed using STEVE software (Figure below).

The full publication is available here!

Figure 1. Live cell holographic tomography-based illustration of lipid droplets in non-infected and B. besnoiti- infected BUVEC.

[1] Silva, L. M. R. et al. Besnoitia besnoiti infection alters both endogenous cholesterol de novo synthesis and exogenous LDL uptake in host endothelial cells. Sci. Rep. 9, 6650 (2019).

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