Establishment of an in vitro chicken epithelial cell line model to investigate Eimeria tenella gamete development

摘要

BackgroundEimeria tenella infection leads to acute intestinal disorders responsible for important economic losses in poultry farming worldwide. The life-cycle of E. tenella is monoxenous with the chicken as the exclusive host; infection occurs in caecal epithelial cells. However, in vitro, the complete life-cycle of the parasite has only been propagated successfully in primary chicken kidney cells, which comprise undefined mixed cell populations; no cell line model has been able to consistently support the development of the sexual stages of the parasite. We therefore sought to develop a new model to study E. tenella gametogony in vitro using a recently characterised chicken cell line (CLEC-213) exhibiting an epithelial cell phenotype.