Cryptococcus neoformans –the sugar-coated killer Like Aspergillus species, Cryptococcus species are found abundantly in the environment often associated with soil, trees, and avian excreta.64 Unlike the Aspergilli, Cryptococcus species are basidiomycete yeasts, giving them morphology distinctly different...
Cryptococcus neoformansPhenotypic switchingColony morphologyGlucuronoxylomannanMany microorganisms have been shown to undergo phenotypic variation. In the fungal world, perhaps the best studied example is that of phenotypic switching in Candida albicans. The molecular basis of this phenomenon is slowly being...
We have now examined these proteins in vivo and demonstrate that cells lacking Gmt1 show significant phenotypic differences from those lacking Gmt2 in terms of growth, colony morphology, protein glycosylation, and capsule phenotypes. Some of these observations may be explained by differential expression...
gattii strain (serotype B) that switches reversibly between its parent mucoid (NP1-MC) colony morphology and a smooth (NP1-SM) colony morphology. Similar to C. neoformans var. grubii and C. neoformans var. neoformans strains, the switch is associated with changes in the polysaccharide capsule...
After incubation at 25 °C for 10 days, culture purity was assessed using colony morphology. To test the effectiveness of the surface sterilization, 100 μl of the last water rinse was plated on PDA and incubated at 25 °C. Long-term samples of the filamentous fungal colonies were stored ...
A common feature shared by systemic fungal pathogens of environmental origin, such as Cryptococcus neoformans, is their ability to adapt to mammalian core body temperature. In C. neoformans, this adaptation is accompanied by Ccr4-mediated decay of riboso
Deletion of either gene results in a dry-colony morphology, clumpy cells, and decreased capsule integrity. Two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy of purified GXM from the mutants indicated that both the wild-type GXM structure and novel, aberrant linkages were present. Carbohydrate ...
We investigated the role of granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) in host defense in a murine model of pulmonary cryptococcosis induced by intratracheal inoculation of Cryptococcus neoformans. Pulmonary C. neoformans infection of C57BL/6 mice is an established model of an allergic...
neoformans and the URA3 marker in C. albicans and C. parapsilosis has been shown to cause defects in adhesion, colony morphology, and virulence that are unrelated to the target genes of interest (Bain et al., 2001; Ding and Butler, 2007; Kirsch and Whitney, 1991; Kwon-Chung et al., ...
A dry colony morphology is characteristic of most known C. neoformans mutants with absent or greatly reduced amounts of capsule (Griffith et al., 2004, Moyrand et al., 2004, Moyrand and Janbon, 2004). Using this simple assay, we identified eleven potentially capsule-defective mutants ...