Figure 2. FIGURE 2: In vitro growth and replication rates of GCaMP6s-expressing parasite strains are comparable to the respective parental strains.

(A) Image illustrating the lytic cycle of tachyzoites leading to plaque formation in host-cell monolayers.

(B) Growth fitness of the specified strains, as measured by plaque assays. In total, 100-200 plaques of each strain were evaluated for their sizes and numbers using ImageJ suite.

(C) Replication rates of the GCaMP6s-expressing strains. Intracellular tachyzoites proliferating in their vacuoles were immunostained with αTgGap45 antibody at the indicated time points. The average number of tachyzoites/vacuole was used to calculate parasite doublings (Example: 1 doubling = 2 parasites/vacuole, and 5 doublings = 32 parasites/vacuole). Graphs depict the mean ± SEM from 3 assays (student’s t-test, *p<0.05, ***p<0.001).