Abstract

Doc number: 238

Abstract

Background: Trypanosoma cruzi , the etiologic agent of Chagas disease, alternates between distinct morphological and functional forms during its life cycle. Axenic multiplication and differentiation processes of this protozoan parasite can be reproduced in vitro , enabling the isolation and study of the different evolutionary forms. Although there are several publications attempting the cultivation of T. cruzi under chemically defined conditions, in our experience none of the published media are capable of maintaining T. cruzi in continuous growth.

Results: In this work we modified a known chemically defined medium for Trypanosoma brucei growth. The resulting LM14 and LM14B defined media enabled cultivation of five different strains of T. cruzi for more than forty passages until now. The parasite's biological characteristics such as morphology and differentiation to metacyclic trypomastigotes were maintained when defined media is used.

Conclusions: The establishment of a defined medium for T. cruzi cultivation is an important tool for basic biological research allowing several different approaches, providing new perspectives for further studies related to cell biology of this parasite.

Details

Title
LM14 defined medium enables continuous growth of Trypanosoma cruzi
Author
De Paula Lima, Carla V; Batista, Michel; Kugeratski, Fernanda G; Vincent, Isabel M; Soares, Maurilio J; Probst, Christian M; Krieger, Marco A; Marchini, Fabricio K
Publication year
2014
Publication date
2014
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
14712180
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12866-014-0238-y
ProQuest document ID
1564802500
Copyright
© 2014 De Paula Lima et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.