Overexpression approaches to advance understanding of Candida albicans.

Laxmi Shanker Rai, Lasse van Wijlick, Murielle Chauvel, Christophe d'Enfert, Mélanie Legrand, Sophie Bachellier-Bassi

Molecular microbiology 2022 Mar

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Candida albicans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen that is responsible for infections linked to high mortality. Loss-of-function approaches, taking advantage of gene knockouts or inducible down-regulation, have been successfully used in this species in order to understand gene function. However, overexpression of a gene provides an alternative, powerful tool to elucidate gene function and identify novel phenotypes. Notably, overexpression can identify pathway components that might remain undetected using loss-of-function approaches. Several repressible or inducible promoters have been developed which allow to shut off or turn on the expression of a gene in C. albicans upon growth in the presence of a repressor or inducer. In this review, we summarize recent overexpression approaches used to study different aspects of C. albicans biology, including morphogenesis, biofilm formation, drug tolerance, and commensalism. © 2021 The Authors. Molecular Microbiology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Citation

Laxmi Shanker Rai, Lasse van Wijlick, Murielle Chauvel, Christophe d'Enfert, Mélanie Legrand, Sophie Bachellier-Bassi. Overexpression approaches to advance understanding of Candida albicans. Molecular microbiology. 2022 Mar;117(3):589-599