Optimization of Babesia bovis transfection methods

The tick borne Babesia parasites remain an important limitation for development of cattle industries worldwide. A stable transfection of Babesia bovis will be useful for functional analysis of the recently sequenced B. bovis genome and to design improved methods to control Babesia infections. In this study, we describe a novel system for nucleofection of B. bovis infected erythrocytes and we optimize methods to introduce plasmids encoding the luciferase reporter gene into Babesia infected erythrocytes or free merozoites using either a BioRad GenePulser II electroporation system or nucleofection technology (Amaxa) A comparative study among four different transfection methods: transfection of infected erythrocytes and purified merozoites with 2 or 100 microg of plasmid, using electroporation (BioRad GenePulser II) or nucleofection (Amaxa) indicates that electroporation of infected erythrocytes with 100 microg of plasmid or nucleofection with 2 microg of plasmid are the most efficient ways to transfect B. bovis parasites. The data also indicate that nucleofection is more efficient than electroporation for transfecting small quantities of plasmids (2 microg range), whereas the inverse is true for transfection of larger quantities (100 microg range). This information will facilitate further development of efficient stable transfection systems.