Implications of interspecies signaling for virulence of bacterial and fungal pathogens

New opportunities for managing acute and chronic lung infections

Lung diseases caused by microbial infections affect hundreds of millions of children and adults throughout the world. In Western populations, the treatment of lung infections is a primary driver of antibiotic resistance. Traditional therapeutic strategies have been based on the premise that the healthy lung is sterile and that infections grow in a pristine environment. As a consequence, rapid advances in our understanding of the composition of the microbiota of the skin and bowel have not yet been matched by studies of the respiratory tree. The recognition that the lungs are as populated with microorganisms as other mucosal surfaces provides the opportunity to reconsider the mechanisms and management of lung infections. Molecular analyses of the lung microbiota are revealing profound adverse responses to widespread antibiotic use, urbanization and globalization. This Opinion article proposes how technologies and concepts flowing from the Human Microbiome Project can transform the diagnosis and treatment of common lung diseases.

Co-occurence of filamentation defects and impaired biofilms in Candida albicans protein kinase mutants

Pathogenicity of Candida albicans is linked with its developmental stages, notably the capacity switch from yeast-like to hyphal growth, and to form biofilms on surfaces. To better understand the cellular processes involved in C. albicans development, a collection of 63 C. albicans protein kinase mutants was screened for biofilm formation in a microtitre plate assay. Thirty-eight mutants displayed some degree of biofilm impairment, with 20 categorised as poor biofilm formers. All the poor biofilm formers were also defective in the switch from yeast to hyphae, establishing it as a primary defect. Five genes, VPS15, IME2, PKH3, PGA43 and CEX1, encode proteins not previously reported to influence hyphal development or biofilm formation. Network analysis established that individual components of some processes, most interestingly MAP kinase pathways, are not required for biofilm formation, most likely indicating functional redundancy. Mutants were also screened for their response to bacterial supernatants and it was found that Pseudomonas aeruginosa supernatants inhibited biofilm formation in all mutants, regardless of the presence of homoserine lactones (HSLs). In contrast, Candida morphology was only affected by supernatant containing HSLs. This confirms the distinct HSL-dependent inhibition of filamentation and the HSL-independent impairment of biofilm development by P. aeruginosa.

Transcriptomics of the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae in response to the bacterial antagonist Lysobacter enzymogenes reveals candidate fungal defense response genes

Plants and animals have evolved a first line of defense response to pathogens called innate or basal immunity. While basal defenses in these organisms are well studied, there is almost a complete lack of understanding of such systems in fungal species, and more specifically, how they are able to detect and mount a defense response upon pathogen attack. Hence, the goal of the present study was to understand how fungi respond to biotic stress by assessing the transcriptional profile of the rice blast pathogen, Magnaporthe oryzae, when challenged with the bacterial antagonist Lysobacter enzymogenes. Based on microscopic observations of interactions between M. oryzae and wild-type L. enzymogenes strain C3, we selected early and intermediate stages represented by time-points of 3 and 9 hours post-inoculation, respectively, to evaluate the fungal transcriptome using RNA-seq. For comparative purposes, we also challenged the fungus with L. enzymogenes mutant strain DCA, previously demonstrated to be devoid of antifungal activity. A comparison of transcriptional data from fungal interactions with the wild-type bacterial strain C3 and the mutant strain DCA revealed 463 fungal genes that were down-regulated during attack by C3; of these genes, 100 were also found to be up-regulated during the interaction with DCA. Functional categorization of genes in this suite included those with roles in carbohydrate metabolism, cellular transport and stress response. One gene in this suite belongs to the CFEM-domain class of fungal proteins. Another CFEM class protein called PTH11 has been previously characterized, and we found that a deletion in this gene caused advanced lesion development by C3 compared to its growth on the wild-type fungus. We discuss the characterization of this suite of 100 genes with respect to their role in the fungal defense response.