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Increased Virulence and Competitive Advantage of a/α Over a/a or α/α Offspring Conserves the Mating System of Candida albicans
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Increased Virulence and Competitive Advantage of a/α Over a/a or α/α Offspring Conserves the Mating System of Candida albicans

Shawn R. Lockhart, Wei Wu, Joshua B. Radke, Rui Zhao and David R. Soll
Genetics (Austin), Vol.169(4), pp.1883-1890
04/01/2005
DOI: 10.1534/genetics.104.038737
PMCID: PMC1449611
PMID: 15695357
url
https://europepmc.org/articles/pmc1449611View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

The majority of Candida albicans strains in nature are a /α and must undergo homozygosis to a / a or α/α to mate. Here we have used a mouse model for systemic infection to test the hypothesis that a /α strains predominate in nature because they have a competitive advantage over a / a and α/α offspring in colonizing hosts. Single-strain injection experiments revealed that a /α strains were far more virulent than either their a / a or α/α offspring. When equal numbers of parent a /α and offspring a / a or α/α cells were co-injected, a /α always exhibited a competitive advantage at the time of extreme host morbidity or death. When equal numbers of an engineered a / a /α2 strain and its isogenic a / a parent strain were co-injected, the a / a /α2 strain exhibited a competitive advantage at the time of host morbidity or death, suggesting that the genotype of the mating-type ( MTL ) locus, not associated genes on chromosome 5, provides a competitive advantage. We therefore propose that heterozygosity at the MTL locus not only represses white-opaque switching and genes involved in the mating process, but also affects virulence, providing a competitive advantage to the a /α genotype that conserves the mating system of C. albicans in nature.
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