White-to-opaque switching is involved in the phospholipase B production of Candida dubliniensis on Price's egg yolk agar.

Abstract

Measuring the production of Candida dubliniensis (C. dubliniensis) phospholipase B (PLase B) by the Price's method has long been considered to be unattainable because the levels of PLase produced are undetectable. In this study, C. dubliniensis, C. glabrata, C. guilliermondii, C. krusei, C. parapsilosis and C. tropicalis were shown to produce PLase B and form clear white zones around their colonies when peptone, a component of the original Price's egg yolk (OP) agar, is replaced with a yeast nitrogen base (YNB). This new medium is named modified Price's (MP) agar. Based on this finding, we propose a new modified Price's (NMP) agar containing 0.75% peptone and 0.25% YNB, which enabled measurement of PLase B production by C. dubliniensis and C. albicans with results consistent with those obtained for C. albicans grown on OP agar. We strongly believe that the MP and NMP agars are very useful for screening PLase B production by C. dubliniensis and non-albicans Candida spp. Moreover, the addition of several bioactive agents (the proteinase inhibitors pepstatin A and saquinavir, the calcineurin inhibitors cyclosporine A and tacrolimus, the cell-permeable cAMP analog dBcAMP, and the quorum-sensing molecule farnesol) to the OP agar enhanced PLase B production by C. dubliniensis. During the course of our study to clarify the reason why PLase B was not produced, we found that C. dubliniensis cells grown on OP agar undergo a white-to-opaque transition, which may explain why they showed minimal production of PLase B on this medium.