the parasexual cycle in candida albicans provides an alternative pathway to meiosis for the formation of recombinant strains白色念珠菌的准性的周期提供了另一种途径减数分裂重组菌株的形成.pdfVIP

PLoS BIOLOGY The Parasexual Cycle in Candida albicans Provides an Alternative Pathway to Meiosis for the Formation of Recombinant Strains 1 2 2 3 1 2* Anja Forche , Kevin Alby , Dana Schaefer , Alexander D. Johnson , Judith Berman , Richard J. Bennett 1 Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America, 2 Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, United States of America, 3 Departments of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Microbiology and Immunology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America Candida albicans has an elaborate, yet efficient, mating system that promotes conjugation between diploid a and a strains. The product of mating is a tetraploid a/a cell that must undergo a reductional division to return to the diploid state. Despite the presence of several ‘‘meiosis-specific’’ genes in the C. albicans genome, a meiotic program has not been observed. Instead, tetraploid products of mating can be induced to undergo efficient, random chromosome loss, often producing strains that are diploid, or close to diploid, in ploidy. Using SNP and comparative genome hybridization arrays we have now analyzed the genotypes of products from the C. albicans parasexual cycle. We show that the parasexual cycle generates progeny strains with shuffled combinations of the eight C. albicans chromosomes. In addition, several isolates had undergone extensive genetic recombination between homologous chromosomes, including multiple gene conversion events. Progeny