Fig. 5.

Analysis of the infectivity of Cryptosporidium parvum sporozoites exysted from oocysts shed by mice treated with off-target or Cp15/60-target morpholinos. Equal amounts of freshly exysted sporozoites from off-target morpholino-treated (black columns) and Cp15/60-target morpholino-treated (grey columns) mice at (A) 4 days p.i., (B) 5 days p.i. and (C) 6 days p.i. were inoculated into human colorectal tumour (HCT-8) cells in culture and analysed for infectivity and proliferation after 48 h and 72 h of culture by an immunofluorescence assay. The green fluorescence generated by intracellular C. parvum merozoites was quantified and is shown on the Y-axis representing the relative parasite load. Representative images of immunofluorescence staining of the HCT-8 cells infected with sporozoites from mice after (D) 4 days p.i., (E) 5 days p.i. and (F) 6 days p.i. Green fluorescence depicts intracellular C. parvum merozoites (×40 objective). The data shown in A-C represent means of three independent experiments with standard error bars.