Uptake of<i>Aspergillus fumigatus</i>Conidia by Phagocytic and Nonphagocytic Cells In Vitro: Quantitation Using Strains Expressing Green Fluorescent Protein
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Several pathogenic fungal organisms enter eukaryotic cells and manipulate the host cell environment to favor their own growth and survival. Aspergillus fumigatus is a saprophytic fungus that causes invasive lung disease in the immunocompromised host. To determine whether A. fumigatus could enter eukaryotic cells, we studied the uptake of two different GFP-expressing A. fumigatus strains into A549 lung epithelial cells, human umbilical vein endothelial (HUVE) cells, and J774 murine macrophages in vitro. A549 cells internalized 30% of the bound conidia whereas HUVE and J774 cells internalized 50 and 90%, respectively. Conidia within A549 cells remained viable for 6 h; however, 60 to 80% of conidia within J774 cells were killed after only 4 h. Live and heat-killed conidia were internalized to the same extent by A549 cells. After 6 h, almost none of the conidia inside A549 cells had germinated, whereas extracellular conidia had developed germ tubes. Internalization of conidia by A549 cells was a temperature-dependent process and required rearrangement of the underlying host cell cytoskeleton; uptake was inhibited by 75% with 0.5 microM cytochalasin D and by 65% with 5 microM colchicine. Fluorescent labeling of infected A549 cells with rhodamine phalloidin provided visible evidence of cytoskeletal alteration as many of the intracellular conidia were contained in actin-coated phagosomes. These data provide evidence that significant numbers of A. fumigatus conidia can be internalized by nonprofessional phagocytes in vitro and these cells may serve as reservoirs for immune cell evasion and dissemination throughout the host.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".