A comparison of mammalian microsporidia species replication in various cell lines

In our work, we compared spore production of two species of microsporidia Encephalitozoon cuniculi and Encephalitozoon intestinalis cultivated in three cell lines - VERO E6, MDBK and RK13. During the cultivation we used RPMI 1640 medium enriched with 5% foetal bovine serum, antibiotics and antimycotics. We recorded the spore production from permanently infected cell cultures every 24 hours during an 8-day period. Our team noticed the highest production of Encephalitozoon cuniculi spores on the cell line RK13 (69.73 x 10(6)/mL) on the 8th day of the experiment. The highest production of Encephalitozoon intestinalis spores was recorded on the cell line MDBK (21.03 x 10(6) /mL) on the 6th day of the experiment. Our experiment proved that for massive in vitro production of Encephalitozoon cuniculi spores the RK13 cell line is optimal and for the high and balanced production of Encephalitozoon intestinalis spores the MDBK cell line is optimal.