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Carbon Catabolite Repression in Filamentous Fungi Is Regulated by Phosphorylation of the Transcription Factor CreA.
FungiNet total, A1, Z2

Abstract (Expand)

Filamentous fungi of the genus Aspergillus are of particular interest for biotechnological applications due to their natural capacity to secrete carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZy) that target plant … biomass. The presence of easily metabolizable sugars such as glucose, whose concentrations increase during plant biomass hydrolysis, results in the repression of CAZy-encoding genes in a process known as carbon catabolite repression (CCR), which is undesired for the purpose of large-scale enzyme production. To date, the C2H2 transcription factor CreA has been described as the major CC repressor in Aspergillus spp., although little is known about the role of posttranslational modifications in this process. In this work, phosphorylation sites were identified by mass spectrometry on Aspergillus nidulans CreA, and subsequently, the previously identified but uncharacterized site S262, the characterized site S319, and the newly identified sites S268 and T308 were chosen to be mutated to nonphosphorylatable residues before their effect on CCR was investigated. Sites S262, S268, and T308 are important for CreA protein accumulation and cellular localization, DNA binding, and repression of enzyme activities. In agreement with a previous study, site S319 was not important for several here-tested phenotypes but is key for CreA degradation and induction of enzyme activities. All sites were shown to be important for glycogen and trehalose metabolism. This study highlights the importance of CreA phosphorylation sites for the regulation of CCR. These sites are interesting targets for biotechnological strain engineering without the need to delete essential genes, which could result in undesired side effects.IMPORTANCE In filamentous fungi, the transcription factor CreA controls carbohydrate metabolism through the regulation of genes encoding enzymes required for the use of alternative carbon sources. In this work, phosphorylation sites were identified on Aspergillus nidulans CreA, and subsequently, the two newly identified sites S268 and T308, the previously identified but uncharacterized site S262, and the previously characterized site S319 were chosen to be mutated to nonphosphorylatable residues before their effect on CCR was characterized. Sites S262, S268, and T308 are important for CreA protein accumulation and cellular localization, DNA binding, and repression of enzyme activities. In agreement with a previous study, site S319 is not important for several here-tested phenotypes but is key for CreA degradation and induction of enzyme activities. This work characterized novel CreA phosphorylation sites under carbon catabolite-repressing conditions and showed that they are crucial for CreA protein turnover, control of carbohydrate utilization, and biotechnologically relevant enzyme production.

Authors: L. J. de Assis, L. P. Silva, O. Bayram, P. Dowling, Olaf Kniemeyer, Thomas Krüger, Axel Brakhage, Y. Chen, L. Dong, K. Tan, K. H. Wong, L. N. A. Ries, G. H. Goldman

Date Published: 5th Jan 2021

Journal: mBio

Comparative Transcriptomic Analysis of Rhinovirus and Influenza Virus Infection.
INF, B5

Abstract (Expand)

Rhinovirus (RV) and influenza virus are the most frequently detected respiratory viruses among adult patients with community acquired pneumonia. Previous clinical studies have identified major differences … in the clinical presentations and inflammatory or immune response during these infections. A systematic transcriptomic analysis directly comparing influenza and RV is lacking. Here, we sought to compare the transcriptomic response to these viral infections. Human airway epithelial Calu-3 cells were infected with contemporary clinical isolates of RV, influenza A virus (IAV), or influenza B virus (IBV). Host gene expression was determined using RNA-seq. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) with respect to mock-infected cells were identified using the overlapping gene-set of four different statistical models. Transcriptomic analysis showed that RV-infected cells have a more blunted host response with fewer DEGs than IAV or IBV-infected cells. IFNL1 and CXCL10 were among the most upregulated DEGs during RV, IAV, and IBV infection. Other DEGs that were highly expressed for all 3 viruses were mainly genes related to type I or type III interferons (RSAD2, IDO1) and chemokines (CXCL11). Notably, ICAM5, a known receptor for enterovirus D68, was highly expressed during RV infection only. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) confirmed that pathways associated with interferon response, innate immunity, or regulation of inflammatory response, were most perturbed for all three viruses. Network analysis showed that steroid-related pathways were enriched. Taken together, our data using contemporary virus strains suggests that genes related to interferon and chemokine predominated the host response associated with RV, IAV, and IBV infection. Several highly expressed genes, especially ICAM5 which is preferentially-induced during RV infection, deserve further investigation.

Authors: T. K. Dissanayake, Sascha Schäuble, Mohammad Mirhakkak, W. L. Wu, A. C. Ng, C. C. Y. Yip, A. G. Lopez, Thomas Wolf, M. L. Yeung, K. H. Chan, K. Y. Yuen, Gianni Panagiotou, K. K. To

Date Published: 28th Aug 2020

Journal: Front Microbiol

Candida Species-Dependent Release of IL-12 by Dendritic Cells Induces Different Levels of NK Cell Stimulation.
A2, B4, C3

Abstract (Expand)

BACKGROUND: Candida albicans and Candida glabrata are the 2 most prevalent Candida species causing bloodstream infections. Patterns of innate immune activation triggered by the 2 fungi differ considerably. … METHODS: To analyze human natural killer (NK) cell activation by both species, we performed ex vivo whole-blood infection assays and confrontation assays with primary human NK cells. RESULTS: C. albicans was a stronger activator for isolated human NK cells than C. glabrata. In contrast, activation of blood NK cells, characterized by an upregulated surface exposure of early activation antigen CD69 and death receptor ligand TRAIL, as well as interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) secretion, was more pronounced during C. glabrata infection. NK cell activation in blood is mediated by humoral mediators released by other immune cells and does not depend on direct activation by fungal cells. Cross-talk between Candida-confronted monocyte-derived dendritic cells (moDC) and NK cells resulted in the same NK activation phenotype as NK cells in human blood. Blocking experiments and cytokine substitution identified interleukin-12 as a critical mediator in regulation of primary NK cells by moDC. CONCLUSIONS: Activation of human NK cells in response to Candida in human blood mainly occurs indirectly by mediators released from monocytic cells.

Authors: A. Marolda, Kerstin Hünniger, S. Bottcher, W. Vivas, Jürgen Löffler, Marc Thilo Figge, Oliver Kurzai

Date Published: 11th Jun 2020

Journal: J Infect Dis

covRNA: discovering covariate associations in large-scale gene expression data.
B2

Abstract (Expand)

OBJECTIVE: The biological interpretation of gene expression measurements is a challenging task. While ordination methods are routinely used to identify clusters of samples or co-expressed genes, these … methods do not take sample or gene annotations into account. We aim to provide a tool that allows users of all backgrounds to assess and visualize the intrinsic correlation structure of complex annotated gene expression data and discover the covariates that jointly affect expression patterns. RESULTS: The Bioconductor package covRNA provides a convenient and fast interface for testing and visualizing complex relationships between sample and gene covariates mediated by gene expression data in an entirely unsupervised setting. The relationships between sample and gene covariates are tested by statistical permutation tests and visualized by ordination. The methods are inspired by the fourthcorner and RLQ analyses used in ecological research for the analysis of species abundance data, that we modified to make them suitable for the distributional characteristics of both, RNA-Seq read counts and microarray intensities, and to provide a high-performance parallelized implementation for the analysis of large-scale gene expression data on multi-core computational systems. CovRNA provides additional modules for unsupervised gene filtering and plotting functions to ensure a smooth and coherent analysis workflow.

Authors: L. Urban, Christian Remmele, Marcus Dittrich, R. F. Schwarz, Tobias Müller

Date Published: 24th Feb 2020

Journal: BMC Res Notes

Comparative Study on Alternative Splicing in Human Fungal Pathogens Suggests Its Involvement During Host Invasion.
INF, B1

Abstract (Expand)

Alternative splicing (AS) is an important regulatory mechanism in eukaryotes but only little is known about its impact in fungi. Human fungal pathogens are of high clinical interest causing recurrent … or life-threatening infections. AS can be well-investigated genome-wide and quantitatively with the powerful technology of RNA-Seq. Here, we systematically studied AS in human fungal pathogens based on RNA-Seq data. To do so, we investigated its effect in seven fungi during conditions simulating ex vivo infection processes and during in vitro stress. Genes undergoing AS are species-specific and act independently from differentially expressed genes pointing to an independent mechanism to change abundance and functionality. Candida species stand out with a low number of introns with higher and more varying lengths and more alternative splice sites. Moreover, we identified a functional difference between response to host and other stress conditions: During stress, AS affects more genes and is involved in diverse regulatory functions. In contrast, during response-to-host conditions, genes undergoing AS have membrane functionalities and might be involved in the interaction with the host. We assume that AS plays a crucial regulatory role in pathogenic fungi and is important in both response to host and stress conditions.

Authors: Patricia Sieber, Kerstin Voigt, P. Kammer, S. Brunke, Stefan Schuster, Jörg Linde

Date Published: 19th Oct 2018

Journal: Front Microbiol

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