Bioluminescence imaging <i>T</i>. <i>cruzi</i> infection models and digestive transit dysfunction screen.

A. Ventral images of female C3H/HeN (top panels) and BALB/c mice (bottom panels) representing TcI-JR (1st and 3rd panel) and TcVI-CLBR (2nd and 4th panel) course of infection. Images were captured using in vivo bioluminescence imaging. Overlaid log-scale pseudocolour heat maps are representative of bioluminescence intensity; the log-scale range is indicated in units of radiance. Adjacent line plots show parasite load represented as average bioluminescence of TcI-JR C3H/HeN (n = 10–24), TcVI-CLBR C3H/HeN (n = 5–12), TcI-JR BALB/c (n = 5–12) and TcVI-CLBR BALB/c (n = 9–22) infected mice against days post infection (p.i.). Limit of detection of bioluminescence is indicated as threshold by dashed line. B. Schematic diagram of the carmine red-dye assay to measure gastrointestinal (GI) transit time delay in mice. C. Bar plots show GI transit time vs. weeks post-infection (p.i.) of BALB/c (left) and C3H/HeN (right) mice in the following groups: naive control BALB/c (n = 8–18), TcI-JR BALB/c (n = 6–17), TcVI-CLBR BALB/c (n = 10–29), naive control C3H/HeN (n = 12–35), TcI-JR C3H/HeN (n = 18–38) and TcVI-CLBR C3H/HeN (n = 6–17). Table (bottom) summarises statistical comparisons of GI transit time delay between groups. All statistically significant values are highlighted (red). Data are expressed as mean ± SEM. Statistical significance was tested using one way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s HSD test.