Monitoring of Lipid Fluxes Between Host and Plastid-Bearing Apicomplexan Parasites

Apicomplexan parasites are unicellular eukaryotes responsible for major human diseases such as malaria and toxoplasmosis, which cause massive social and economic burden. Toxoplasmosis, caused by Toxoplasma gondii, is a global chronic infectious disease affecting ~1/3 of the world population and is a major threat for any immunocompromised patient. To date, there is no efficient vaccine against these parasites and existing treatments are threatened by rapid emergence of parasite resistance. Throughout their life cycle, Apicomplexa require large amount of nutrients, especially lipids for propagation and survival. Understanding lipid acquisition is key to decipher host-parasite metabolic interactions. Parasite membrane biogenesis relies on a combination of (a) host lipid scavenging, (b) de novo lipid synthesis in the parasite, and (c) fluxes of lipids between host and parasite and within. We recently uncovered that parasite need to store the host-scavenged lipids to avoid their toxic accumulation and to mobilize them for division. How can parasites orchestrate the many lipids fluxes essential for survival? Here, we developed metabolomics approaches coupled to stable isotope labelling to track, monitor, and quantify fatty acid and lipids fluxes between the parasite, its human host cell, and its extracellular environment to unravel the complex lipid fluxes in any physiological environment the parasite could meet.