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Toxoplasma gondii  actively invades host cells and establishes a parasitophorous vacuole (PV) that accumulates many proteins secreted by the dense granules (GRA proteins). To date, at least 23 GRA proteins have been reported, though the function(s) of most of these proteins still remains unknown. We targeted gene knockouts at ten  GRA  gene loci ( GRA1-10 ) to investigate the cellular roles and essentiality of these classical GRA proteins during acute infection in the virulent type I RH strain. While eight of these genes ( GRA2-9 ) were successfully knocked out, targeted knockouts at the  GRA1  and  GRA10  loci were not obtained, suggesting these GRA proteins may be essential. As expected, the Δ gra2  and Δ gra6  knockouts failed to form an intravacuolar network (IVN). Surprisingly, Δ gra7  exhibited hyper-formation of the IVN in both normal and lipid-free growth conditions. No morphological alterations were identified in parasite or PV structures in the Δ gra3 , Δ gra4 , Δ gra5 , Δ gra8 ,  or  Δ gra9  knockouts. With the exception of the Δ gra3  and Δ gra8  knockouts, all of the GRA knockouts exhibited defects in their infection rate  in vitro . While the single GRA knockouts did not exhibit reduced replication rates  in vitro , replication rate defects were observed in three double  GRA  knockout strains (Δ gra4 Δ gra6 , Δ gra3 Δ gra5  and Δ gra3 Δ gra7 ). However, the virulence of single or double GRA knockout strains in CD1 mice was not affected. Collectively, our results suggest that while the eight individual GRA proteins investigated in this study (GRA2-9) are not essential, several GRA proteins may provide redundant and potentially important functions during acute infection.

Phenotypes Associated with Knockouts of Eight Dense Granule Gene Loci (GRA2-9) in Virulent Toxoplasma gondii