一些报告表明，肠道组织可能是沙眼衣原体感染的天然生态位，也是人体内持续感染的储存库。由于病原体的人类特异性以及缺乏合适的宿主模型，人们对这一主题的了解有限。在我们的研究中，我们模拟了源自患者类器官的人类原代胃肠道（GI）上皮细胞中衣原体感染的过程。我们发现胃肠道细胞对顶端感染具有抵抗力，并且沙眼衣原体需要进入基底外侧膜才能建立感染。透射电子显微镜分析显示受感染细胞中存在正常和异常的衣原体发育形式，这表明感染可能具有细胞类型特异性。此外，我们发现质粒编码的 Pgp3 是感染人类胃肠道细胞的重要毒力因子。这是人类原代肠上皮细胞中沙眼衣原体感染的第一份报告，支持人类肠道组织中衣原体感染的可能生态位。版权所有：© 2024 Hovhannisyan 等人。这是一篇根据知识共享署名许可条款分发的开放获取文章，允许在任何媒体上不受限制地使用、分发和复制，前提是注明原始作者和来源。

Several reports suggest that intestinal tissue may be a natural niche for Chlamydia trachomatis infection and a reservoir for persistent infections in the human body. Due to the human specificity of the pathogen and the lack of suitable host models, there is limited knowledge on this topic. In our study, we modelled the course of the chlamydial infection in human primary gastrointestinal (GI) epithelial cells originating from patient-derived organoids. We show that GI cells are resistant to apical infection and C. trachomatis needs access to the basolateral membrane to establish an infection. Transmission electron microscopy analysis reveals the presence of both normal as well as aberrant chlamydial developmental forms in the infected cells, suggesting a possible cell-type specific nature of the infection. Furthermore, we show that the plasmid-encoded Pgp3 is an important virulence factor for the infection of human GI cells. This is the first report of C. trachomatis infection in human primary intestinal epithelial cells supporting a possible niche for chlamydial infection in the human intestinal tissue.Copyright: © 2024 Hovhannisyan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.