Research Article

Immunomodulation by Trypanosoma cruzi: Toward Understanding the Association of Dendritic Cells with Infecting TcI and TcII Populations

Figure 1

DC infection rates depend on the infective T. cruzi strain. Murine bone marrow-derived DCs were incubated for 18 h with different CFSE-labeled T. cruzi strains (1 nM CFSE; MOI 3 : 1), and fluorescent DCs were quantified by flow cytometry. (a) Schematic representation of the gating strategy and determination of T. cruzi CFSE staining (>99.5% for all strains). (b) DCs and T. cruzi present different FSC × SSC patterns, allowing the determination of DC infection without nonintracellular T. cruzi interference. (c) Representative dot plots for T. cruzi-infected DCs (CFSE+; left to right: noninfected, AQ1.7, MUTUM, 1849, and 2369). (d) Representative histogram of CFSE+ DCs infected with different T. cruzi strains (d), the % of infected DCs (e), and the parasite load per DC based on the MFI of positive cells (f).
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