Highly mutable tandem DNA repeats generate a cell wall protein variant more frequent in disease-causing Candida albicans isolates than in commensal isolates.

ABSTRACT: During adaptation to host environments, many microorganisms alter their cell surface. One mechanism for doing so is variation in the number of amino acid repeats in cell surface proteins encoded by hypermutable DNA tandem repeats. In the yeast Candida albicans, an opportunistic human pathogen, the gene SSR1 encodes a GPI-anchored cell wall protein with a structural role. It contains two regions consisting of tandem repeats, almost exclusively encoding the amino acid pair Ser-Ala. As expected, the repeat regions make SSR1 highly mutable. New SSR1 alleles arose with a frequency of 1.11×10-4 per cell division in serially propagated cells. We also observed a large number (25) of SSR1 alleles with different repeat lengths in a survey of 131 isolates from a global strain collection. C. albicans

SUBMITTER: Zhou Z 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5491155 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature