Author:

Keywords:

Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, 0304 Medicinal and Biomolecular Chemistry, 0601 Biochemistry and Cell Biology, 1101 Medical Biochemistry and Metabolomics, 3101 Biochemistry and cell biology, 3205 Medical biochemistry and metabolomics, 3404 Medicinal and biomolecular chemistry

Abstract:

The majority of fungal infections are caused by Candida species, mainly Candida albicans. C. albicans can proliferate in many different niches within the host and must be able to sence its environment in order to express only those genes to proliferate in that area. In this case sensing and uptake of amino acids is very important for C. albicans cell growth as well as for virulence. In S. cerevisiae, one general amino acids permease Gap1 was found. It is not only reguired for amino acids transport, but also for sensing the presence of amino acids and activating signal transduction pathways that induce many intracellular changes. In C. albicans, a family of Gap1 homologues exists. In our work, we focuse on investigation the role of CaGAP genes. We would like to elucidate the role of individual CaGap1 permeases in the virulence and pathogenecity of this species, together with the characterization of their transport properties. For this we employ deletion of GAP genes in the C. albicans SC5314 strain, using the URA3-based deletion cassette, and heterologues expression of CaGAP genes in a S. cerevisiae gap1∆ mutant to characterize substrate specifity and kinetic parameters of individual CaGap permeases. This work was supported by the GA CR 204/03/H066, MSMT LC351, and Czech-Flamish bilateral project.