( atments or therapy to prevent rejectio...)Scientists decipher genome of fungus that can cause life-threatening infections

atments, or therapy to prevent rejection of transplanted organs. One study indicated that as many as 13 percent of AIDS patients suffer a life-threatening cryptococcal infection at some point during the course of their HIV disease. The disease caused by the fungus, cryptococcosis, sometimes involves a fatal brain inflammation. "In developing countries, cryptococcosis has emerged as one of the most common opportunistic infections, and a leading cause of meningitis and bloodstream infection," says Joseph Heitman, a senior community collaborator on the project who is James B. Duke Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at the Duke University Medical Center and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "In Africa, where both HIV and concomitant cryptococcal infection are common, survival without therapy is as short as 7 to 10 days following diagnosis." The major virulence factor of C. neoformans is its extensive polysaccharide capsule, an elaborate and dynamic structure surrounding the cell wall that is unique among fungi that affect humans. The Science study identified greater than 30 new genes likely involved in capsule biosynthesis, including a family containing 7 members of the capsule associated (CAP64) gene. Researchers compared two closely related genomes of C. neoformans that differ markedly in their virulence properties. The results indicate that the differences likely involve other factors than the absence or presence of individual genes in the two isolates. A combination of other factors ?perhaps including the cumulative impact of small (single-nucleotide) DNA differences and differences in when the genes are expressed (turned on or off) ?may account for the disparity in virulence. Among the surprising findings of the study were the complex gene structures discovered in C. neoformans that are unlike those found in previously sequenced yeasts and are reminiscent of the genomes of more complex organisms. The study also catalogued, for th
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Source:TIGR


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