Abstract
The biological properties of fungal immunogens have historically utilized testing of isolated molecules. Recent findings, however, indicate that fungal glycans differing in structure and function can interact to form hybrid complexes with unique properties. In the pathogenic yeast Cryptococcus neoformans, chitin-like molecules associate with capsular glucuronoxylomannan (GXM) to form functionally distinct glycan complexes. Such interactions between glycans that result in the formation of structures with different functions strongly suggest that additional molecular complexes with unknown properties may exist in fungal pathogens. Moreover, the identification of these novel complexes has stimulated the search of new immunogens with potential to protect human and animal hosts against systemic mycoses.
Highlights
The surface of fungal cells is rich in polysaccharides and proteinor lipid-bound oligosaccharides (Nimrichter et al, 2005) that are called glycans (Bertozzi and Rabuka, 2009)
There has been an extraordinarily rich spectrum of fungal glycans identified with activities ranging from activation of innate responses and induction of humoral and cell-mediated functions to inhibiting host effector cell recruitment and dysregulating cytokine responses (Casadevall and Pirofski, 2005, 2006; Lee et al, 2008; Li et al, 2009; Sorgi et al, 2009; Mora-Montes et al, 2011; Vecchiarelli et al, 2011)
Examples of fungal glycans showing contrasting biological activities are available in a number of comprehensive reviews and the impact of glycans from the human pathogenic Cryptococcus neoformans have especially been investigated (Fukazawa et al, 1995; San-Blas et al, 2000; Pirofski, 2001; Zaragoza et al, 2009; Vecchiarelli et al, 2011)
Summary
The surface of fungal cells is rich in polysaccharides and proteinor lipid-bound oligosaccharides (Nimrichter et al, 2005) that are called glycans (Bertozzi and Rabuka, 2009). In the fungal cell wall, polysaccharides, glycoproteins and glycolipids form complex carbohydrate networks that play key physiological functions (Nimrichter et al, 2005), such as providing structural support and regulating extracellular secretion (Rodrigues et al, 2008b; Casadevall et al, 2009).
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