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Opposing signaling pathways regulate morphology in response to temperature in the fungal pathogen Histoplasma capsulatum.

ABSTRACT: Phenotypic switching between 2 opposing cellular states is a fundamental aspect of biology, and fungi provide facile systems to analyze the interactions between regulons that control this type of switch. A long-standing mystery in fungal pathogens of humans is how thermally dimorphic fungi switch their developmental form in response to temperature. These fungi, including the subject of this study, Histoplasma capsulatum, are temperature-responsive organisms that utilize unknown regulatory pathways to couple their cell shape and associated attributes to the temperature of their environment. H. capsulatum grows as a multicellular hypha in the soil that switches to a pathogenic yeast form in response to the temperature of a mammalian host. These states can be triggered in the laboratory simply by growing the fungus either at room temperature (RT; which promotes hyphal growth) or at 37 °C (which promotes yeast-phase growth). Prior worked revealed that 15% to 20% of transcripts are differentially expressed in response to temperature, but it is unclear which transcripts are linked to specific phenotypic changes, such as cell morphology or virulence. To elucidate temperature-responsive regulons, we previously identified 4 transcription factors (required for yeast-phase growth [Ryp]1-4) that are required for yeast-phase growth at 37 °C; in each ryp mutant, the fungus grows constitutively as hyphae regardless of temperature, and the cells fail to express genes that are normally induced in response to growth at 37 °C. Here, we perform the first genetic screen to identify genes required for hyphal growth of H. capsulatum at RT and find that disruption of the signaling mucin MSB2 results in a yeast-locked phenotype. RNA sequencing (RNAseq) experiments reveal that MSB2 is not required for the majority of gene expression changes that occur when cells are shifted to RT. However, a small subset of temperature-responsive genes is dependent on MSB2 for its expression, thereby implicating these genes in the process of filamentation. Disruption or knockdown of an Msb2-dependent mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase (HOG2) and an APSES transcription factor (STU1) prevents hyphal growth at RT, validating that the Msb2 regulon contains genes that control filamentation. Notably, the Msb2 regulon shows conserved hyphal-specific expression in other dimorphic fungi, suggesting that this work defines a small set of genes that are likely to be conserved regulators and effectors of filamentation in multiple fungi. In contrast, a few yeast-specific transcripts, including virulence factors that are normally expressed only at 37 °C, are inappropriately expressed at RT in the msb2 mutant, suggesting that expression of these genes is coupled to growth in the yeast form rather than to temperature. Finally, we find that the yeast-promoting transcription factor Ryp3 associates with the MSB2 promoter and inhibits MSB2 transcript expression at 37 °C, whereas Msb2 inhibits accumulation of Ryp transcripts and proteins at RT. These findings indicate that the Ryp and Msb2 circuits antagonize each other in a temperature-dependent manner, thereby allowing temperature to govern cell shape and gene expression in this ubiquitous fungal pathogen of humans.

SUBMITTER: Rodriguez L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6786654 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Opposing signaling pathways regulate morphology in response to temperature in the fungal pathogen Histoplasma capsulatum.

Rodriguez Lauren L Voorhies Mark M Gilmore Sarah S Beyhan Sinem S Myint Anthony A Sil Anita A

PLoS biology 20190930 9

Phenotypic switching between 2 opposing cellular states is a fundamental aspect of biology, and fungi provide facile systems to analyze the interactions between regulons that control this type of switch. A long-standing mystery in fungal pathogens of humans is how thermally dimorphic fungi switch their developmental form in response to temperature. These fungi, including the subject of this study, Histoplasma capsulatum, are temperature-responsive organisms that utilize unknown regulatory pathwa ...[more]

PMID: 31568523

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Project description:Regulation of iron acquisition genes is critical for microbial survival under both iron-limiting conditions (to acquire essential iron) and iron-replete conditions (to limit iron toxicity). In fungi, iron acquisition genes are repressed under iron-replete conditions by a conserved GATA transcriptional regulator. Here we investigate the role of this transcription factor, Sre1, in the cellular responses of the fungal pathogen Histoplasma capsulatum to iron. We showed that cells in which SRE1 levels were diminished by RNA interference were unable to repress siderophore biosynthesis and utilization genes in the presence of abundant iron, and thus produced siderophores even under iron-replete conditions. Mutation of a GATA-containing consensus site found in the promoters of these genes also resulted in inappropriate gene expression under iron-replete conditions. Microarray analysis comparing control and SRE1-depleted strains under conditions of iron limitation or abundance revealed both iron-responsive genes and Sre1-dependent genes, which comprised distinct but overlapping sets. Iron-responsive genes included putative oxidoreductases, metabolic and mitochondrial enzymes, superoxide dismutase, and nitrosative-stress response genes; Sre1-dependent genes were of diverse function. Genes regulated by iron levels and Sre1 included all of the siderophore biosynthetic genes, a gene involved in reductive iron acquisition, an iron-responsive transcription factor, and two catalases. Based on transcriptional profiling and phenotypic analyses, we conclude that Sre1 plays a critical role in the regulation of both traditional iron-responsive genes and iron-independent pathways such as regulation of cell morphology. These data highlight the evolving realization that the effect of Sre1 orthologs on fungal biology extends beyond the iron regulon. For microarray studies, initial cultures of HcLH120 (Control RNAi-1) or 123 (SRE1 RNAi-2) yeast cells were grown in 5 mL HMM, and then passaged 1:25 into 100 mL HMM. After 2 days of growth, the cultures were pelleted, washed in 100 mL of PBS, resuspended in 100 mL of mRPMI pH 6.5 and diluted to an OD600~2 in 1 L of mRPMI. After 24 hours of growth, 200 mL of culture was harvested for each of the three zero time points. Then the cultures were split into 2 X 400 mL, and 10 uM FeSO4 (final concentration) was added to one set of cultures. At each time point (.5, 1, 4, or 8 hours), 100 mL of culture was harvested for RNA extraction.

Project description:Histoplasma capsulatum is a fungal pathogen that infects both healthy and immunocompromised hosts. In endemic regions, H. capsulatum grows in the soil and causes respiratory and systemic disease when inhaled by humans. An interesting aspect of H. capsulatum biology is that it adopts specialized developmental programs in response to its environment. In the soil, it grows as filamentous chains of cells (mycelia) that produce asexual spores (conidia). When the soil is disrupted, conidia aerosolize and are inhaled by mammalian hosts. Inside a host, conidia germinate into yeast-form cells that colonize immune cells and cause disease. Despite the ability of conidia to initiate infection and disease, they have not been explored on a molecular level. Here we develop methods to purify H. capsulatum conidia and show that these cells germinate into either filaments at room temperature or into yeast-form cells at 37C. Conidia internalized by macrophages germinate into the yeast form and proliferate within the macrophages, ultimately lysing the host cells. Similarly, infection of mice with purified conidia is sufficient to establish infection and yield viable yeast-form cells in vivo. To characterize conidia on a molecular level, we perform whole-genome expression profiling of conidia, yeast, and mycelia from two highly diverged H. capsulatum strains. In parallel, we use homology and protein domain analysis to manually annotate the predicted genes of both strains. Analyses of the resultant data define sets of transcripts that reflect the unique molecular states of H. capsulatum conidia, yeast and mycelia. This series gives the results for the G186AR strain. Samples were labeled with Cy5 or with Cy3 and competitively hybridized to custom glass slide 70-mer oligomer microarrays in a closed-circuit experimental design (e.g. direct, pairwise comparisons of yeast and mycelial samples, mycelial and conidial samples, and yeast and conidial samples). Dye-swap hybridizations were performed for these pairwise comparisons, as well as an additional technical replicate hybridization for the conidia/yeast comparison, for a total of 7 hybridizations.

Project description:Histoplasma capsulatum is a fungal pathogen that infects both healthy and immunocompromised hosts. In endemic regions, H. capsulatum grows in the soil and causes respiratory and systemic disease when inhaled by humans. An interesting aspect of H. capsulatum biology is that it adopts specialized developmental programs in response to its environment. In the soil, it grows as filamentous chains of cells (mycelia) that produce asexual spores (conidia). When the soil is disrupted, conidia aerosolize and are inhaled by mammalian hosts. Inside a host, conidia germinate into yeast-form cells that colonize immune cells and cause disease. Despite the ability of conidia to initiate infection and disease, they have not been explored on a molecular level. Here we develop methods to purify H. capsulatum conidia and show that these cells germinate into either filaments at room temperature or into yeast-form cells at 37C. Conidia internalized by macrophages germinate into the yeast form and proliferate within the macrophages, ultimately lysing the host cells. Similarly, infection of mice with purified conidia is sufficient to establish infection and yield viable yeast-form cells in vivo. To characterize conidia on a molecular level, we perform whole-genome expression profiling of conidia, yeast, and mycelia from two highly diverged H. capsulatum strains. In parallel, we use homology and protein domain analysis to manually annotate the predicted genes of both strains. Analyses of the resultant data define sets of transcripts that reflect the unique molecular states of H. capsulatum conidia, yeast and mycelia. This series gives the results for the G217B strain. Samples were labeled with Cy5 or with Cy3 and competitively hybridized to custom glass slide 70-mer oligomer microarrays in a closed-circuit experimental design (e.g. direct, pairwise comparisons of yeast and mycelial samples, mycelial and conidial samples, and yeast and conidial samples). Dye-swap hybridizations were performed for these pairwise comparisons, and hybridizations to an additional conidial biological replicate were performed for the conidia/yeast and conidia/mycelia comparisons, for a total of 8 hybridizations.

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Opposing signaling pathways regulate morphology in response to temperature in the fungal pathogen Histoplasma capsulatum.

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Opposing signaling pathways regulate morphology in response to temperature in the fungal pathogen Histoplasma capsulatum.

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