332 research outputs found
Hyphal Orientation of Candida albicans Is Regulated by a Calcium-Dependent Mechanism
SummaryEukaryotic cells from fungal hyphae to neurites that grow by polarized extension must coordinate cell growth and cell orientation to enable them to exhibit growth tropisms and to respond to relevant environmental cues. Such cells generally maintain a tip-high Ca2+ cytoplasmic gradient, which is correlated with their ability to exhibit polarized tip growth and to respond to growth-directing extracellular signals [1ā5]. In yeast and other fungi, the polarisome, exocyst, Arp2/3, and Spitzenkƶrper protein complexes collectively orchestrate tip growth and cell polarity, but it is not clear whether these molecular complexes also regulate cell orientation or whether they are influenced by cytoplasmic Ca2+ gradients. Hyphae of the human pathogenic fungus Candida albicans reorient their growth axis in response to underlying surface topography (thigmotropism) [6] and imposed electric fields (galvanotropism) [7]. The establishment and maintenance of directional growth in relation to these environmental cues was Ca2+ dependent. Tropisms were attenuated in media containing low Ca2+, or calcium-channel blockers, and in mutants where calcium channels or elements of the calcium signaling pathway were deleted. Therefore galvanotropism and thigmotropism may both be mediated by localized Ca2+ influx at sites of polarized growth via Ca2+ channels that are activated by appropriate environmental signals
Fig1 facilitates calcium influx and localizes to membranes destined to undergo fusion during mating in Candida albicans
Few mating-regulated genes have been characterized in Candida albicans. C. albicans FIG1 (CaFIG1) is a fungus-specific and mating-induced gene encoding a putative 4-transmembrane domain protein that shares sequence similarities with members of the claudin superfamily. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Fig1 is required for shmoo fusion and is upregulated in response to mating pheromones. Expression of CaFIG1 was also strongly activated in the presence of cells of the opposite mating type. CaFig1-green fluorescent protein (GFP) was visible only during the mating response, when it localized predominantly to the plasma membrane and perinuclear zone in mating projections and daughter cells. At the plasma membrane, CaFig1-GFP was visualized as discontinuous zones, but the distribution of perinuclear CaFig1-GFP was homogeneous. Exposure to pheromone induced a 5-fold increase in Ca(2+) uptake in mating-competent opaque cells. Uptake was reduced substantially in the fig1Ī null mutant. CaFig1 is therefore involved in Ca(2+) influx and localizes to membranes that are destined to undergo fusion during mating
Cell wall glycans and soluble factors determine the interactions between the hyphae of Candida albicans and Pseudomonas aeruginosa
The fungus, Candida albicans, and the bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, are opportunistic human pathogens that have been coisolated from diverse body sites. Pseudomonas aeruginosa suppresses C. albicans proliferation in vitro and potentially in vivo but it is the C. albicans hyphae that are killed while yeast cells are not. We show that hyphal killing involves both contact-mediated and soluble factors. Bacterial culture filtrates contained heat-labile soluble factors that killed C. albicans hyphae. In cocultures, localized points of hyphal lysis were observed, suggesting that adhesion and subsequent bacteria-mediated cell wall lysis is involved in the killing of C. albicans hyphae. The glycosylation status of the C. albicans cell wall affected the rate of contact-dependent killing because mutants with severely truncated O-linked, but not N-linked, glycans were hypersensitive to Pseudomonas-mediated killing. Deletion of HWP1, ALS3 or HYR1, which encode major hypha-associated cell wall proteins, had no effect on fungal susceptibility
Crosstalk between the calcineurin and cell wall integrity pathways prevents chitin overexpression in Candida albicans
Funding Information: We thank Carol Munro for helpful discussions during the research, Raif Yuecel, Elizabeth Adams, Linda Duncan, Barry Lewis and Kimberley Sim for assistance with FACS at Aberdeen Cytometry Core Facility, and Yang Meng and Dominique Sanglard with help in construction of mutants. We also thank Linghuo Jiang, David Soll, Jes?s Pla, Jan Quinn, Terry Roemer and Joseph Heitman for mutant strains. N.A.R.G. acknowledges support from the Wellcome Trust [Senior Investigator (101873/Z/13/Z), Collaborative (200208/A/15/Z and 215599/Z/19/Z) and Strategic (097377/Z11/Z) Awards] and from the Medical Research Council Centre for Medical Mycology (MR/N006364/2). This work was also supported by a Marie Curie FP7-PEOPLE-ITN-2008 grant (MB004 RGE0655 ARIADNE) and by a Wellcome Trust project grant (086827). Open access funding provided by University of Exeter. Deposited in PMC for immediate release.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
The He Cross Section at Large Missing Energy
The reaction on nuclei was studied in kinematics
designed to emphasize effects of nuclear short-range correlations. The measured
cross sections display a peak in the kinematical regions where two-nucleon
processes are expected to dominate. Theoretical models incorporating
short-range correlation effects agree reasonably with the data.Comment: 4 pages LaTeX, using espcrc1.sty and wrapfig.sty (included), two
figures. Talk presented by J. Templon at the 15th Int. Conf. on Few-Body
Problems in Physics, Groningen, The Netherlands, 22-26 July, 199
Performance of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter of the HERMES Experiment
The performance of the electromagnetic calorimeter of the HERMES experiment
is described. The calorimeter consists of 840 radiation resistant F101
lead-glass counters. The response to positrons up to 27.5 GeV, the comparison
between the measured energy and the momentum reconstructed from tracking,
long-term stability, hadron rejection and neutral meson invariant mass
reconstruction are shown.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures, LaTeX, accepted by NI
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