Effect of BFD2 (TGME49_311100) deletion on gene expression in Toxoplasma gondii

The acute-to-chronic stage transition in Toxoplasma gondii involes a global restructuring of the parasite transcriptome and is induced under alkaline stress. We found that parasites lacking the RNA-binding protein BFD2 are unable to produce chronic forms, consistent with a block in this develomental program. To understand how BFD2 facilitates chronic-stage transcriptional reprogramming in T. gondii, we profiled the transcriptomes of both 'wildtype' and BFD2-knockout parasites under alkaline-stressed and standard culture conditions Overall design: Comparative RNA-seq analysis was performed on ?bfd2 and its parental strain of Toxoplasma (ME49), cultured for 48h under either alkaline-stressed or undstressed conditions. Experiments were performed in biological triplicate (separate infections) and technical duplicate (i.e. samples split in two at the time of harvest and processed in parallel for all subsequent steps, from RNA isolation through library prepartion and sequencing).