Project description:Phenotypic plasticity, the ability to switch between different morphological types, plays critical roles in environmental adaptation, leading to infections, and allowing for sexual reproduction in pathogenic Candida species. Candida tropicalis, which is both an emerging human fungal pathogen and an environmental fungus, can switch between two heritable cell types termed white and opaque. In this study, we report the discovery of a novel phenotype in C. tropicalis, named the gray phenotype. Similar to Candida albicans and Candida dubliniensis, white, gray, and opaque cell types of C. tropicalis also form a tristable switching system, where gray cells are relatively small and elongated. In C. tropicalis, gray cells exhibit intermediate levels of mating competency and virulence in a mouse systemic infection model compared to the white and opaque cell types, express a set of cell type-enriched genes, and exhibit both common and species-specific biological features. The key regulators of white-opaque transitions, Wor1 and Efg1, are not required for the gray phenotype. A comparative study of the gray phenotypes in C. tropicalis, C. albicans, and C. dubliniensis provides clues to explain the species differences in terms of virulence, ecological niches, and prevalence among these three species.
Project description:Candida tropicalis is an opportunistic pathogen which causes candidiasis in immune-compromised individuals. It is one of the members of the non-albicans group of Candida that are known to be azole resistant and is frequently seen in individuals being treated for cancers, HIV-infection and bone-marrow transplant. Although the genome of C. tropicalis was sequenced in the year 2009, the genome annotation has not been supported by experimental validation. In the present study, we have carried out in-depth proteomic profiling of C. tropicalis using high-resolution Fourier transform mass spectrometry and mapped ~44% of the computationally predicted protein-coding genes with peptide level evidence. In addition to identifying 2,740 proteins in the cell lysate of this yeast, we also analysed the proteome of the conditioned media of C. tropicalis culture and identified several unique secreted proteins among a total of 780 proteins. By subjecting the mass spectrometry data derived from cell lysate and conditioned media to proteogenomic analysis, we identified 86 novel genes, 12 novel exons and corrected 49 computationally predicted gene models. To our knowledge, this is the first high-throughput proteomic study to refine the genome annotation of C. tropicalis.
Project description:Homo sapiens fresh whole blood was infected with Candida tropicalis. RNA-pool of both species extracted at 0min (control), 15, 30, 60, 120, 240 min. Samples are rRNA depleted. Measurement of Candida tropicalis gene expression.