Hippocampal brain section from a Cre-reporter mouse shows an uninfected, mature neuron that is ZsGreen+.
Cre-reporter mice were infected with 5000 tachyzoites of Pru-mcherry-Cre parasites and sacrificed at 21 dpi. The brain was removed and sectioned in 40 µm sections which were then stained for NeuN, DCX, and DAPI and examined by confocal microscopy. (a,b) Merged images from different sections in a confocal stack spanning 8 µm through the hippocampus. Individual filter images are shown to the right. Blue = DAPI, Green = ZsGreen, Red = mCherry parasites and anti-DCX antibody staining, and Cyan = anti-NeuN antibody staining. (a)Arrowhead denotes the uninfected ZsGreen+ cell. Scale bars = 10 µm. (b) As for (a) except arrowheads denote the two cells that stain for DCX. An expanded montage of images from the stack for (a) and (b) is shown in Supplemental Figure 1. (c) As for parts (a) and (b) except the single slice is from a different confocal stack of the same brain and shows an intracellular parasite cyst (arrowhead). Note the ZsGreen signal completely surrounding the red parasites.