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Eukaryotic Cell, June 2005, p. 1009-1017, Vol. 4, No. 6
1535-9778/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/EC.4.6.1009-1017.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
A Genome Sequence Survey Shows that the Pathogenic Yeast Candida parapsilosis Has a Defective MTLa1 Allele at Its Mating Type Locus
Mary E. Logue,1
Simon Wong,2
Kenneth H. Wolfe,2 and
Geraldine Butler1*
Department of Biochemistry, Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland,1
Department of Genetics, Smurfit Institute, University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland2
Received 25 September 2004/
Accepted 22 March 2005
Candida parapsilosis is responsible for ca. 15% of Candida infections and is of particular concern in neonates and surgical intensive care patients. The related species Candida albicans has recently been shown to possess a functional mating pathway. To analyze the analogous pathway in C. parapsilosis, we carried out a genome sequence survey of the type strain. We identified ca. 3,900 genes, with an average amino acid identity of 59% with C. albicans. Of these, 23 are predicted to be predominantly involved in mating. We identified a genomic locus homologous to the MTLa mating type locus of C. albicans, but the C. parapsilosis type strain has at least two internal stop codons in the MTLa1 open reading frame, and two predicted introns are not spliced. These stop codons were present in MTLa1 of all eight C. parapsilosis isolates tested. Furthermore, we found that all isolates of C. parapsilosis tested appear to contain only the MTLa idiomorph at the presumptive mating locus, unlike C. albicans and C. dubliniensis. MTL
sequences are present but at a different chromosomal location. It is therefore likely that all (or at least the majority) of C. parapsilosis isolates have a mating pathway that is either defective or substantially different from that of C. albicans.
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Biochemistry, Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. Phone: 353-1-7166885. Fax: 353-1-2837211. E-mail:
Geraldine.Butler{at}ucd.ie.
Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://ec.asm.org/.
Eukaryotic Cell, June 2005, p. 1009-1017, Vol. 4, No. 6
1535-9778/05/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/EC.4.6.1009-1017.2005
Copyright © 2005, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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