Pheromone independent unisexual development in Cryptococcus neoformans.

The fungus Cryptococcus neoformans can undergo a-α bisexual and unisexual reproduction. Completion of both sexual reproduction modes requires similar cellular differentiation processes and meiosis. Although bisexual reproduction generates equal number of a and α progeny and is far more efficient than unisexual reproduction under mating-inducing laboratory conditions, the α mating type dominates in nature.

A Family of Secretory Proteins Is Associated with Different Morphotypes in Cryptococcus neoformans.

, an opportunistic human fungal pathogen, can undergo a yeast-to-hypha transition in response to environmental cues. This morphological transition is associated with changes in the expression of cell surface proteins. The cell surface and secreted protein Cfl1 was the first identified adhesin in the Basidiomycota.

Morphotype transition and sexual reproduction are genetically associated in a ubiquitous environmental pathogen.

Sexual reproduction in an environmental pathogen helps maximize its lineage fitness to changing environment and the host. For the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans, sexual reproduction is proposed to have yielded hyper virulent and drug resistant variants. The life cycle of this pathogen commences with mating, followed by the yeast-hypha transition and hyphal growth, and it concludes with fruiting body differentiation and sporulation.

Fungal adhesion protein guides community behaviors and autoinduction in a paracrine manner.

Microbes live mostly in a social community rather than in a planktonic state. Such communities have complex spatiotemporal patterns that require intercellular communication to coordinate gene expression. Here, we demonstrate that Cryptococcus neoformans, a model eukaryotic pathogen, responds to an extracellular signal in constructing its colony morphology.

Prezygotic and postzygotic control of uniparental mitochondrial DNA inheritance in Cryptococcus neoformans.

Unlabelled: Uniparental inheritance of mitochondrial DNA is pervasive in nonisogamic higher eukaryotes during sexual reproduction, and postzygotic and/or prezygotic factors are shown to be important in ensuring such an inheritance pattern. Although the fungus Cryptococcus neoformans undergoes sexual production with isogamic partners of opposite mating types a and α, most progeny derived from such mating events inherit the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the a parent. The homeodomain protein complex Sxi1α/Sxi2a, formed in the zygote after a-α cell fusion, was previously shown to play a role in this uniparental mtDNA inheritance.

Mechanisms of Uniparental Mitochondrial DNA Inheritance in Cryptococcus neoformans.

In contrast to the nuclear genome, the mitochondrial genome does not follow Mendelian laws of inheritance. The nuclear genome of meiotic progeny comes from the recombination of both parental genomes, whereas the meiotic progeny could inherit mitochondria from one, the other, or both parents. In fact, one fascinating phenomenon is that mitochondrial DNA in the majority of eukaryotes is inherited from only one particular parent.