Journal
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
Volume 11, Issue 1, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-97287-3
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Funding
- JSPS KAKENHI [JP20K07022]
- Research Program on Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases of the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development, AMED
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Trichosporon asahii is a pathogenic fungus causing severe infections, and establishing an efficient gene-targeting system in a highly pathogenic strain can aid in elucidating its infection mechanisms. Using a gene transfer system, a ku70 gene-deficient mutant with higher efficiency was obtained to construct a mutant lacking the cnb1 gene, which showed reduced pathogenicity. This suggests that studying a highly pathogenic strain using a gene-targeting system can help understand the molecular mechanisms of infection by T. asahii.
Trichosporon asahii is a pathogenic fungus that causes severe, deep-seated fungal infections in neutropenic patients. Elucidating the infection mechanisms of T. asahii based on genetic studies requires a specific gene-targeting system. Here, we established an efficient gene-targeting system in a highly pathogenic T. asahii strain identified using the silkworm infection model. By comparing the pathogenicity of T. asahii clinical isolates in a silkworm infection model, T. asahii MPU129 was identified as a highly pathogenic strain. Using an Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated gene transfer system, we obtained a T. asahii MPU129 mutant lacking the ku70 gene, which encodes the Ku70 protein involved in the non-homologous end-joining repair of DNA double-strand breaks. The ku70 gene-deficient mutant showed higher gene-targeting efficiency than the wild-type strain for constructing a mutant lacking the cnb1 gene, which encodes the beta-subunit of calcineurin. The cnb1 gene-deficient mutant showed reduced pathogenicity against silkworms compared with the parental strain. These results suggest that an efficient gene-targeting system in a highly pathogenic T. asahii strain is a useful tool for elucidating the molecular mechanisms of T. asahii infection.
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