The Cdc25 and Ras1 Proteins of Candida albicans Influence Epithelial Toxicity in a Niche-Specific Way

The PKA pathway is a signaling pathway involved in virulence in Candida albicans. This mechanism can be activated via addition of glucose and activation involves at least two proteins, namely Cdc25 and Ras1. Both proteins are involved in specific virulence traits. However, it is not clear if Cdc25 and Ras1 also affect virulence independently of PKA. C. albicans holds a second, atypical, Ras protein, Ras2, but its function in PKA activation is still unclear. We investigated the role of Cdc25, Ras1, and Ras2 for different in vitro and ex vivo virulence characteristics. We show that deletion of CDC25 and RAS1 result in less toxicity towards oral epithelial cells, while deletion of RAS2 has no effect. However, toxicity towards cervical cells increases in both the ras2 and the cdc25 mutants while it decreases in a ras1 mutant compared to the WT. Toxicity assays using mutants of the transcription factors downstream of the PKA pathway (Efg1) or the MAPK pathway (Cph1) show that the ras1 mutant shows similar phenotypes as the efg1 mutant, whereas the ras2 mutant shows similar phenotypes as the cph1 mutant. These data show niche-specific roles for different upstream components in regulating virulence through both signal transduction pathways

The EU clean energy package (ed. 2020)

The EU Clean Energy Package (CEP) was finalised in June 2019 after the publication of its final texts in the Official Journal of the European Union, following trilogue negotiations between the European Commission, Council, and Parliament. It includes eight legislative texts - four directives and four regulations - on the electricity market and consumers, energy efficiency and the energy efficiency of buildings, renewables and bioenergy sustainability as well as governance of the Energy Union. In this report, we will focus on three of the eight legislative texts. First is the Regulation on the Governance of the Energy Union and Climate Action (Regulation (EU) 2018/1999). Second is the directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources (Directive (EU) 2018/2001) that is commonly referred to as RED II. Third is the directive on common rules for the internal market in electricity (Directive (EU) 2019/944). We will assess the impact of this legislation on the European internal electricity market rules compared to the framework established by the Third Energy Package. In this report, we present the background to the CEP provisions and weigh the possible implications of these measures

Inception Report beyond2020 - Approaches for a Harmonisation of RES(-E) Support in Europe: Beyond 2020. Design and impact of a harmonised policy for renewable electricity in Europe. D7.1 Report

This report concludes the inception phase of the beyond2020 project, summarising the work done up to the mid-term of the project and offering a brief outlook on forthcoming working steps