Ultrastructure of intraerythrocytic Babesia microti with emphasis on the feeding mechanism

Abstract

Babesia microti is a highly polymorphic organism. To unravel its fine structure and the function of organelles it was necessary to resort often to serial sections. A single plasma membrane covers the organism. In trophozoites approaching reproduction, segments of double membranes can be found below the plasma membrane. In electron micrographs of poor resolution these segments of double membranes look like pieces of thick membranes and they were often thought to be a thick 2nd membrane. Before the segments of double membranes appear 2 other organelles are formed in older trophozoites: micronemes and rhoptries. There are indications that these structures originate from vesicles of the Golgi apparatus. Large dense bodies of the same structure as the host cytoplasm are not food vacuoles but merely invaginations of host cytoplasm, as found in serial sections and in organisms removed from the host cell. Feeding in Babesia seems to take place by a special organelle composed of tightly coiled double membranes located partly inside and partly outside the parasite. It is assumed that extracellular digestion of host cytoplasm take place through this organelle. The nucleus remains undifferentiated throughout the whole intraerythrocytic stage. It becomes irregular, loboid, but does not divide and remains a single body until the late stage of reproduction when only a small portion, a bud, extends into the forming merozoite.