Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 4.
Effect of
ADH
1 gene on
C. albicans
interaction with engineered human oral
mucosa. Tissue was exposed to either the parent or the Adh1 mutant
C. albicans
strains
for 24 h after which time histological analyses were performed. Tissue was infected
with (A) no
Candida
cells (uninfected control), (B) the parental
C. albicans
strain, (C) the
revertant strain and (D) the Adh1 mutant strain. Representative photographs of three
different experiments are shown.
(Color image of this fi gure appears in the color plate section at the end of the topic.)
Role of PMT genes and proteins on
C. albicans
pathogenesis
C. albicans
genome contains fi ve protein
O
-mannosyltransferase
(PMT)
genes. The
PMT
gene family consists of
PMT1
and
PMT6
, as well as three
other genes (
Pmt
2,
Pmt
4 and
Pmt
5 isoforms).
Pmt
1 gene
Mutation of the
Pmt
1 gene does not promote
C. albicans
death, but rather
inhibits its morphological changes from yeast to hyphal form (Timpel et
al. 1998, Timpel et al. 2002). When lacking this gene,
C. albicans
is very
sensitive to several anti-fungal drugs that target fungal cell wall synthesis.
Virulence of
Pmt
1 mutant is signifi cantly reduced (Timpel et al. 1998,
Timpel et al. 2002), thus confi rming the involvement of the
Pmt
1 gene in
C.
albicans
adhesion and virulence (Prill et al. 2005). Moreover, an increased
Pmt
1 transcript level was observed in Pmt4
mutants (Cantero et al., 2007).
It is also important to note that a
Pmt
1
-Pmt
4 double mutant was shown
to be non-viable (Prill et al. 2005). Using two sophisticated host models
(engineered skin and engineered oral mucosa) and an animal model,
Pmt
1
mutant virulence was shown to be severely reduced. Indeed, the
Pmt
1
