Leveraging a new data resource to define the response of Cryptococcus neoformans to environmental signals.

ABSTRACT: Cryptococcus neoformans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen with a polysaccharide capsule that becomes greatly enlarged in the mammalian host and during in vitro growth under host-like conditions. To understand how individual environmental signals affect capsule size and gene expression, we grew cells in all combinations of 5 signals implicated in capsule size and systematically measured cell and capsule sizes. We also sampled these cultures over time and performed RNA-seq in quadruplicate, yielding 881 RNA-seq samples. Analysis of the resulting data sets showed that capsule induction in tissue culture medium, typically used to represent host-like conditions, requires the presence of either CO2 or exogenous cyclic AMP. Surprisingly, adding either of these pushes overall gene expression in

SUBMITTER: Kang YS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11708910 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature