An animal toxin-antidote system kills cells by creating a novel cation channel
Fig 3
PEEL-1 toxicity results in HEK293T cell swelling.
(A) Brightfield images of cells transfected with indicated constructs. Cells were imaged 48 hrs after transfection. Scale bar = 25 µm. Arrows point to swollen cells. (B) Percent of transfected cells that appear normal or swollen under brightfield. Mean with SD of three biological replicates is shown. One hundred cells were scored for each condition in each biological replicate. (C) Selected frames of a live-cell imaging time-course experiment (see S1 Movie). A single cell is shown, co-expressing PEEL-1::eGFP and PMPL-1::mCherry. The nucleus is labeled (“N”). t = 0 is 16 hrs after transfection. Acute swelling can be seen (t = 2 hr 30 min), followed by a transient blob or protrusion (arrow) jetted out by the cell (t = 4 hr 15 min) and later reabsorbed (dotted arrow) (t = 4 hr 20 min). Scale bar = 10 µm. (D) A typical phenotype from a cell transfected with PEEL-1::eGFP and PMPL-1::mCherry at 48 hrs post-transfection. PEEL-1 and PMPL-1 can be seen on the plasma membrane (arrow) and in fragmented ER (arrowhead). Scale bar = 10 µm. Underlying data are available in S1 Data.