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Eukaryotic Cell, March 2008, p. 546-549, Vol. 7, No. 3
1535-9778/08/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/EC.00437-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
Regulation of Cryptococcus neoformans Capsule Size Is Mediated at the Polymer Level
Aki Yoneda and
Tamara L. Doering*
Department of Molecular Microbiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri 63110
Received 30 November 2007/
Accepted 17 December 2007

ABSTRACT
The fungal pathogen
Cryptococcus neoformans regulates its polysaccharide
capsule depending on environmental stimuli. To investigate whether
capsule polymers change under different growth conditions, we
analyzed shed capsules at physiological concentrations without
physical perturbation. Our results indicate that regulation
of capsule size is mediated at the level of individual polysaccharide
molecules.

TEXT
Cryptococcus neoformans is an encapsulated yeast that causes
serious opportunistic infections. The major virulence factor
of this pathogen is its polysaccharide capsule. This material
is antiphagocytic and has immunomodulatory effects (
15,
19,
33); it surrounds the cell and is constitutively shed into the
surroundings. The major component of cryptococcal capsule is
glucuronoxylomannan (GXM), a linear, high-molecular-weight polysaccharide.
Imaging studies indicate that the capsule is composed of a meshwork
of fibers (
25,
29-
31) which varies in density with distance
from the cell wall (
8) and with growth conditions (
25). The
thickness of the capsule exceeds the calculated length of individual
GXM fibers (
17).
C. neoformans capsule volume responds to environmental factors, including iron levels and CO2 concentrations (9, 14, 32). Although signaling pathways involved in capsule variation have been investigated (1, 5, 12, 35), how the physical changes occur is poorly understood. Factors that contribute to larger capsules are likely to be complex: they may include greater production and/or secretion of polysaccharides, more extensive polysaccharide assembly, decreased capsule shedding, and synthesis of structurally altered or larger polysaccharide molecules. To test the hypothesis that regulation of capsule size is mediated at the level of individual polysaccharide molecules, we investigated shed GXM. We detected this material using a monoclonal antibody to GXM that specifically binds both shed material (described below) and cryptococcal capsules on live cells (8).
We observed that when JEC21 (wild type, serotype D) cells were grown to late stationary phase in rich medium (YPD; 1% yeast extract, 2% peptone, 2% glucose), a subpopulation displayed larger capsules. To test whether the properties of shed GXM changed during this growth, we diluted JEC21 cells from a starter culture into duplicate flasks (50 ml YPD; 106 cells/ml) and incubated them with shaking at 30°C. At intervals we drew a 0.5-ml sample from each flask, counted cells, and diluted one culture ("diluted culture") to the starting density, while the other was cultured continuously ("continuous culture"). To examine GXM, we subjected samples of culture supernatant fluid to electrophoresis on an agarose gel. The gel was transferred onto a Nytran SuPerCharge (Whatman) membrane using DNA blotting methods (3), and the membrane was air dried, blocked with 5% skim milk in Tris-buffered saline, probed with an anti-GXM monoclonal antibody followed by horseradish peroxidase-conjugated anti-mouse immunoglobulin G (Sigma), and developed with a chemiluminescent reagent (Perkin Elmer). The electromobility of shed GXM dramatically decreased as the continuous culture aged (Fig. 1). In contrast, there was little change in GXM migration when the culture was periodically diluted (Fig. 1), and the modest differences observed were not consistent between experiments (data not shown). We also noticed that average capsule thickness in the continuous culture doubled between 11 and 48 h, while that of the diluted culture remained nearly constant over the same interval (Table 1); this led to a marked difference in average capsule size between the two cultures (Table 1; P < 0.0001 at 48 h). For the continuous culture, no capsules with a radius above 3 µm (triple the size of capsules in the starting culture) were present at 0 or 11 h, but cells with these capsules comprised 19% of the population at 24 and 35 h and 40% of the population at 48 and 75 h. The very largest capsules (>4.5 µm) were only observed at the last two time points.
We considered several explanations for the changes in GXM. First,
increasing concentrations of capsule components in the medium
over time could lead to self-association of capsule polysaccharides
(
24) and corresponding reduced mobility. Alternatively, the
cells could be producing altered GXM of lower mobility, due
to an increase in polymer length, a difference in substitution
or structure, covalent cross-linking, and/or association with
other macromolecules. Such alterations could potentially be
stimulated by increased cell density and/or reduced nutrients
in the continuous culture.
To further investigate the relationship between capsule size and the electromobility of shed GXM, we tested whether known capsule-inducing conditions (9, 32, 38, 39) affected GXM gel migration. We chose Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM) plus CO2 (9) for these studies, as it yielded the most-consistent capsule induction for JEC21. A starter culture of JEC21 was grown in YPD, washed in DMEM, resuspended in DMEM at 106 cells/ml, and incubated for 14 h in the presence of 5% CO2. The electromobility of the GXM shed from cells grown in this medium was significantly lower than that of GXM from any YPD-grown samples (Fig. 2). We considered the possibility that this change represented self-association of GXM, perhaps involving divalent cations (24). However, migration was not altered by dialysis of the sample against water or 10 mM EDTA (data not shown). Moreover, the GXM concentrations in supernatants from the DMEM-induced overnight cultures were <10 µg/ml by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (23), a value substantially below those of the concentrated GXM preparations reported to initiate self-aggregation (24).
These capsule induction studies supported our observations of
the correlation between capsule size and GXM electromobility
and further suggested that changes in the latter were not related
to high cell density, as cells grow very slowly in DMEM (see
Fig.
2 legend). To further investigate the changes in GXM, we
next examined capsule-induced cells that were washed and returned
to YPD. By 4 h after the medium change, the induced cells were
budding daughter cells with small capsules (Fig.
3A, lane 4),
and by 8 h those daughter cells began to bud (Fig.
3A, lane
8). By 24 h over 98% of the cells in the culture had small capsules,
although a few of the originally induced cells could be observed
(Fig.
3A, lane 24; also data not shown). Capsule size distributions
for each time point reflect this progression (Fig.
3B). Notably,
the migration of shed GXM increased coordinately with the fraction
of cells with small capsules (Fig.
3C), further demonstrating
the relationship between capsule size and the electromobility
of shed GXM. It is striking that in this experiment GXM mobility
increased as the culture aged, the reverse of the pattern in
Fig.
1. This shows that reduced GXM electromobility is not related
to the effects of long-term culture, including increased GXM
concentration in the medium, higher cell density, and reduced
nutrient availability. All of our studies use minimally processed
samples of capsule materials shed in a physiological manner,
with GXM concentrations between 0.2 to 200 µg/ml (in the
range of those reported in human infections [
6]). The results
are therefore likely to represent a biologically relevant GXM
change. Together, our data suggest that less-encapsulated cells
produce a polymer that is fundamentally altered compared to
that made by highly encapsulated cells. The simplest hypothesis
is that this polymer is of reduced length, but changes in substitution,
covalent cross-linking, or other factors could also play a role.
The differences we observe in GXM are independent of residence
time at the cell surface, as the GXM from mutant cells which
shed this polymer but cannot bind it to the cell wall (
ags1 [
27]) migrates like that of the wild type (data not shown).
They are also unlikely to reflect noncovalent self-association.
Our results from JEC21 cells strongly support the hypothesis
that modification of GXM molecules plays a central role in determining
C. neoformans capsule size. This is a novel explanation for
the observed changes in
C. neoformans capsule size, although
it echoes themes in studies of bacterial and mammalian polysaccharides
(
26,
34,
36). Further, it is consistent with all of the current
models of capsule construction (
8,
16,
25,
28,
37,
40). Future
studies incorporating additional strains and mutants with altered
capsule synthesis or binding characteristics (
2,
10,
13,
20-
22,
27) will further elucidate the relationship between shed and
bound GXM and how
C. neoformans synthesizes and regulates its
polysaccharide capsule.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Morgann Reilly, Andrew Kau, Stacey Klutts, and Indrani
Bose for helpful discussion, Thomas Kozel and Arturo Casadevall
for anti-GXM antibodies, and Jennifer Lodge for the
C. neoformans strain.
This work was supported by NIH awards GM71007 and AI073380
[GenBank]
to T.L.D.
A.Y. was partially supported by a Berg/Morse Fellowship from the Department of Molecular Microbiology.

FOOTNOTES
* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Molecular Microbiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110. Phone: (314) 747-5597. Fax: (314) 362-1232. E-mail:
doering{at}borcim.wustl.edu 
Published ahead of print on 21 December 2007. 

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Eukaryotic Cell, March 2008, p. 546-549, Vol. 7, No. 3
1535-9778/08/$08.00+0 doi:10.1128/EC.00437-07
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.
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