Abstract
Exophiala dermatitidis (Wangiella dermatitidis) belongs to the group of the so-called black yeasts. Thanks in part to its thick and strongly melanized cell walls, E. dermatitidis is extremely tolerant to various kinds of stress, including extreme pH, temperature and desiccation. E. dermatitidis is also the agent responsible for various severe illnesses in humans, such as pneumonia and keratitis, and might lead to fatal brain infections. Due to its association with the human environment, its poly-extremophilic lifestyle and its pathogenicity in humans, E. dermatitidis has become an important model organism. In this study we present the functional analysis of the transcriptional response of the fungus at 1°C and 45°C, in comparison with that at 37°C, for two different exposition times, i.e. 1 hour and 1 week. At 1°C, E. dermatitidis uses a large repertoire of tools to acclimatize, such as lipid membrane fluidization, trehalose production or cytoskeleton rearrangement, which allows the fungus to remain metabolically active. At 45°C, the fungus drifts into a replicative state and increases the activity of the Golgi apparatus. As a novel finding, our study provides evidence that, apart from the protein coding genes, non-coding RNAs, circular RNAs as well as fusion-transcripts are differentially regulated and that the function of the fusion-transcripts can be related to the corresponding temperature condition. This work establishes that E. dermatitidis adapts to its environment by modulating coding and non-coding gene transcription levels and through the regulation of chimeric and circular RNAs.
Highlights
Black yeasts are a polyphyletic morphological group within the Ascomycetes that is characterized by melanized cells and yeast-like growth states in PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0127103 June 10, 2015Gene Expression Response of E. dermatitidis under Varying Temperature addition to hyphal growth
E. dermatitidis is of special medical importance since it causes a variety of severe illnesses in humans: it is a causative agent of keratitis, of subcutaneous phaeohyphomycosis, and of chromoblastomycosis, and may cause pneumonia
To understand the molecular mechanisms behind the acclimatization of E. dermatitidis under a wide range of temperature adaptations, the fungus was exposed to 45°C and 1°C and the gene expression was analyzed through RNA-seq technology
Summary
Black yeasts are a polyphyletic morphological group within the Ascomycetes that is characterized by melanized cells and yeast-like growth states (multilateral and polar budding cells) in PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0127103 June 10, 2015Gene Expression Response of E. dermatitidis under Varying Temperature addition to hyphal growth. All black yeasts and meristematic fungi share a number of universally present characters, such as strong melanization, thick and even multi-layered cell walls and exo-polysaccharide production, resulting in an extraordinary ability to tolerate chemical and physical stresses such as extreme pH, high and low temperature and desiccation [3,4,5]. Some of those fungi—including E. dermatitidis—show increased cell growth—division and cell size—when exposed to ionizing radiation [6,7]. The fungus is neurotropic and causes fatal brain infections, and it plays an important role in patients with cystic fibrosis [8,10,11,12,13]
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