
The fungal peptide toxin Candidalysin activates the NLRP3 inflammasome and causes cytolysis in mononuclear phagocytes.


Clearance of invading microbes requires phagocytes of the innate immune system. However, successful pathogens have evolved sophisticated strategies to evade immune killing. The opportunistic human fungal pathogen Candida albicans is efficiently phagocytosed by macrophages, but causes inflammasome activation, host cytolysis, and escapes after hypha formation. Previous studies suggest that macrophage lysis by C. albicans results from early inflammasome-dependent cell death (pyroptosis), late damage due to glucose depletion and membrane piercing by growing hyphae. Here we show that Candidalysin, a cytolytic peptide toxin encoded by the hypha-associated gene ECE1, is both a central trigger for NLRP3 inflammasome-dependent caspase-1 activation via potassium efflux and a key driver of inflammasome-independent cytolysis of macrophages and dendritic cells upon infection with C. albicans. This suggests that Candidalysin-induced cell damage is a third mechanism of C. albicans-mediated mononuclear phagocyte cell death in addition to damage caused by pyroptosis and the growth of glucose-consuming hyphae.
SEEK ID: https://funginet.hki-jena.de/publications/143
PubMed ID: 30323213
Projects: C1
Publication type: Not specified
Journal: Nat Commun
Citation: Nat Commun. 2018 Oct 15;9(1):4260. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-06607-1.
Date Published: 15th Oct 2018
Registered Mode: Not specified

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Created: 16th Feb 2021 at 12:03
Last updated: 17th Jan 2024 at 10:24

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