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Science 14 July 2000:
Vol. 289. no. 5477, pp. 307 - 310
DOI: 10.1126/science.289.5477.307
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Reports

Evidence for Mating of the "Asexual" Yeast Candida albicans in a Mammalian Host

Christina M. Hull, * Ryan M. Raisner, * Alexander D. Johnson dagger

Since its classification nearly 80 years ago, the human pathogen Candida albicans has been designated as an asexual yeast. In this report, we describe the construction of C. albicans strains that were subtly altered at the mating-type-like (MTL) locus, a cluster of genes that resembles the mating-type loci of other fungi. These derivatives were capable of mating after inoculation into a mammalian host. C. albicans is a diploid organism, but most of the mating products isolated from a mouse host were tetrasomic for the two chromosomes that could be rigorously monitored and, overall, exhibited substantially higher than 2n DNA content. These observations demonstrated that C. albicans can recombine sexually.

Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
*   These authors contributed equally to this work.

dagger    To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ajohnson{at}socrates.ucsf.edu

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Eukaryot. Cell 2, 328-340
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Genetics 162, 737-745
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Microbiology 148, 1061-1072
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J. Clin. Microbiol. 39, 3906-3914
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N. J. Holton, T. J. D. Goodwin, M. I. Butler, and R. T. M. Poulter (2001)
Nucleic Acids Res. 29, 4014-4024
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J. M. Hornby, E. C. Jensen, A. D. Lisec, J. J. Tasto, B. Jahnke, R. Shoemaker, P. Dussault, and K. W. Nickerson (2001)
Appl. Envir. Microbiol. 67, 2982-2992
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T. J. Lott and M. M. Effat (2001)
Microbiology 147, 1687-1692
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The role and relevance of phospholipase D1 during growth and dimorphism of Candida albicans.
B. Hube, D. Hess, C. A. Baker, M. Schaller, W. Schäfer, and J. W. Dolan (2001)
Microbiology 147, 879-889
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Characterization of Agglutinin-like Sequence Genes From Non-albicans Candida and Phylogenetic Analysis of the ALS Family.
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Genetics 157, 1555-1567
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Genomic evidence for a complete sexual cycle in Candida albicans.
K.-W. Tzung, R. M. Williams, S. Scherer, N. Federspiel, T. Jones, N. Hansen, V. Bivolarevic, L. Huizar, C. Komp, R. Surzycki, et al. (2001)
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A. G. Smulian, T. Sesterhenn, R. Tanaka, and M. T. Cushion (2001)
Genetics 157, 991-1002
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Genetics 157, 1003-1014
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J. Bacteriol. 183, 865-872
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J. Beckerman, H. Chibana, J. Turner, and P. T. Magee (2001)
Infect. Immun. 69, 108-114
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Phenotypic Analysis and Virulence of Candida albicans LIG4 Mutants.
E. Andaluz, R. Calderone, G. Reyes, and G. Larriba (2001)
Infect. Immun. 69, 137-147
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Identification of the MATa mating-type locus of Cryptococcus neoformans reveals a serotype A MATa strain thought to have been extinct.
K. B. Lengeler, P. Wang, G. M. Cox, J. R. Perfect, and J. Heitman (2000)
PNAS 97, 14455-14460
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Signal Transduction Cascades Regulating Fungal Development and Virulence.
K. B. Lengeler, R. C. Davidson, C. D'souza, T. Harashima, W.-C. Shen, P. Wang, X. Pan, M. Waugh, and J. Heitman (2000)
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)