Expression profiling by high throughput sequencing
Summary
Candida albicans is the major invasive fungal pathogen of humans, causing diseases ranging from superficial mucosal infections to disseminated, systemic infections which are often life threatening. Hematogenously disseminated candidiasis (HDC) has a 47% mortality rate despite current antifungal therapy. An increase in prevalence, as well as an increasing resistance to most of the clinically important antifungal therapies, provides a strong impetus to understand the molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis and the acquisition of drug resistance. This information holds promise to identify novel therapeutic targets. A complete and accurate characterization of how the transcriptome of C. albicans responds to its interaction with cells from the host is an absolute necessity to accomplish this goal. RNA-seq (deep-sequencing of cDNA) provides an unbiased method to define comprehensively and systematically the transcriptome of an organism. We propose a comprehensive characterization of the C. albicans transcriptome in two different human tissue culture models, using RNA-seq. Such a characterization will shed unprecedented light on how fungal pathogens sense and respond to the host environment and how the host tissue responds to fungal invasion. We performed a comprehensive characterization of the C. albicans transcriptome in two different murine models of candidiasis (HDC and oropharyngeal candidiasis (OPC)), and two different human tissue culture models, using RNA-seq. Because the two murine models accurately recapitulate the pathology that is observed in clinical cases of candidiasis, we are confident that gene expression levels will provide an accurate representation of what occurs during the course of an infection in humans. Such a characterization of the in vivo transcriptome will shed unprecedented light on how fungal pathogens sense and respond to the host environment and how the host tissue responds to fungal invasion. PRJNA86065
Overall design
Two different strains of C. albicans (SC5314 or WO-1) were used to infect two different types of human tissue culture monolayers (HUVECs or OKF6-TERT2). RNA from the infection mixtures were harvested at 90 minutes, 5 hours and 8 hours post infection. Experiments were performed in biological duplicate.
Less...
More...