Mitochondria and the regulation of hypervirulence in the fatal fungal outbreak on Vancouver Island

Abstract

In our recent paper, we demonstrated that the hypervirulence exhibited by a lineage of the fatal fungal pathogen Cryptococcus gattii is associated with its mitochondrial gene expression and an unusual mitochondrial morphology. As an important organelle, the mitochondrion has been linked to various cellular activities, but its role in modulating virulence of pathogens remains unclear. In this addendum, the potential role of mitochondria in determining virulence in eukaryotic pathogens is discussed along with future experiments that may lead to an improved understanding of this topic.

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Acknowledgements

This work was made possible with financial support from the Medical Research Council (G0601171) and the Wellcome Trust (WT088148MF). We also would like to thank Wenjun Li from the Heitman lab at the Duke University for the help on the A1M-R265 and WM276 mtDNA alignment.

Figures and Tables

Figure 1 A schematic illustration of the experimental design for two crosses to generate progeny with mitochondria from only their mating type a (mata) parent.

Figure 2 mtDNA structure of Cryptococcus: all the mtDNAs show a conserved gene synteny but have different sizes. (A) IFM5844 (C. neoformans var. neoformans, serotype D) and (B) IFO410 (C. neoformans var. grubii, serotype A). These two mtDNA structures were drawn to scale based on information from litter et al.;37 (C) mtDNA structure of A1M-R265 (C. gattii, VGII). Sections with light blue colour are either introns or intergenic spaces;5 (D) Circular mtDNA structure of JEC21 (C. neoformans var. neoformans) and H99 (C. neoformans var. grubii) (taken from Toffaletti et al.16); (E) Simple alignment of A1M-R265 and WM276 (C. gattii, VGI) mtDNA using ClusterW. Before alignment, two repeat regions in both mtDNAs were removed (region one: 2434 nucleotides in COX1 gene; region two: 963 nucleotide at the end of the supercontig). Sections with white color stand for the variations between two mtDNA sequences.

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