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Sexual Differentiation Is Coordinately Regulated by Cryptococcus neoformans CRK1 and GAT1
The heterothallic basidiomycetous fungus Cryptococcus neoformans has two mating types, MATa and MATα. Morphological progression of bisexual reproduction in C. neoformans is as follows: yeast to hyphal transition, filament extension, basidium formation, meiosis, and sporulation. C. neoformans Cdk-rel...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7349709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32575488 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes11060669 |
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author | Liu, Kuang-Hung Shen, Wei-Chiang |
author_facet | Liu, Kuang-Hung Shen, Wei-Chiang |
author_sort | Liu, Kuang-Hung |
collection | PubMed |
description | The heterothallic basidiomycetous fungus Cryptococcus neoformans has two mating types, MATa and MATα. Morphological progression of bisexual reproduction in C. neoformans is as follows: yeast to hyphal transition, filament extension, basidium formation, meiosis, and sporulation. C. neoformans Cdk-related kinase 1 (CRK1) is a negative regulator of bisexual mating. In this study, we characterized the morphological features of mating structures in the crk1 mutant and determined the genetic interaction of CRK1 in the regulatory networks of sexual differentiation. In the bilateral crk1 mutant cross, despite shorter length of filaments than in the wild-type cross, dikaryotic filaments and other structures still remained intact during bisexual mating, but the timing of basidium formation was approximately 18 h earlier than in the cross between wild type strains. Furthermore, gene expression analyses revealed that CRK1 modulated the expression of genes involved in the progression of hyphal elongation, basidium formation, karyogamy and meiosis. Phenotypic results showed that, although deletion of C. neoformans CRK1 gene increased the efficiency of bisexual mating, filamentation in the crk1 mutant was blocked by MAT2 or ZNF2 mutation. A bioinformatics survey predicted the C. neoformans GATA transcriptional factor Gat1 as a potential substrate of Crk1 kinase. Our genetic and phenotypic findings revealed that C. neoformans GAT1 and CRK1 formed a regulatory circuit to negatively regulate MAT2 to control filamentation progression and transition during bisexual mating. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7349709 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-73497092020-07-15 Sexual Differentiation Is Coordinately Regulated by Cryptococcus neoformans CRK1 and GAT1 Liu, Kuang-Hung Shen, Wei-Chiang Genes (Basel) Article The heterothallic basidiomycetous fungus Cryptococcus neoformans has two mating types, MATa and MATα. Morphological progression of bisexual reproduction in C. neoformans is as follows: yeast to hyphal transition, filament extension, basidium formation, meiosis, and sporulation. C. neoformans Cdk-related kinase 1 (CRK1) is a negative regulator of bisexual mating. In this study, we characterized the morphological features of mating structures in the crk1 mutant and determined the genetic interaction of CRK1 in the regulatory networks of sexual differentiation. In the bilateral crk1 mutant cross, despite shorter length of filaments than in the wild-type cross, dikaryotic filaments and other structures still remained intact during bisexual mating, but the timing of basidium formation was approximately 18 h earlier than in the cross between wild type strains. Furthermore, gene expression analyses revealed that CRK1 modulated the expression of genes involved in the progression of hyphal elongation, basidium formation, karyogamy and meiosis. Phenotypic results showed that, although deletion of C. neoformans CRK1 gene increased the efficiency of bisexual mating, filamentation in the crk1 mutant was blocked by MAT2 or ZNF2 mutation. A bioinformatics survey predicted the C. neoformans GATA transcriptional factor Gat1 as a potential substrate of Crk1 kinase. Our genetic and phenotypic findings revealed that C. neoformans GAT1 and CRK1 formed a regulatory circuit to negatively regulate MAT2 to control filamentation progression and transition during bisexual mating. MDPI 2020-06-19 /pmc/articles/PMC7349709/ /pubmed/32575488 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes11060669 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Liu, Kuang-Hung Shen, Wei-Chiang Sexual Differentiation Is Coordinately Regulated by Cryptococcus neoformans CRK1 and GAT1 |
title | Sexual Differentiation Is Coordinately Regulated by Cryptococcus neoformans CRK1 and GAT1 |
title_full | Sexual Differentiation Is Coordinately Regulated by Cryptococcus neoformans CRK1 and GAT1 |
title_fullStr | Sexual Differentiation Is Coordinately Regulated by Cryptococcus neoformans CRK1 and GAT1 |
title_full_unstemmed | Sexual Differentiation Is Coordinately Regulated by Cryptococcus neoformans CRK1 and GAT1 |
title_short | Sexual Differentiation Is Coordinately Regulated by Cryptococcus neoformans CRK1 and GAT1 |
title_sort | sexual differentiation is coordinately regulated by cryptococcus neoformans crk1 and gat1 |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7349709/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32575488 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes11060669 |
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