Vacuolar trafficking and Candida albicans pathogenesis

Abstract

The vacuole is likely to play a variety of roles in supporting host coloni-zation and infection by pathogenic spe-cies of fungi. In the human pathogen Candida albicans, the vacuole undergoes dynamic morphological shifts during the production of the tissue invasive hyphal form, and this organelle is required for virulence. Recent efforts in my lab have focused on defining which vacuolar traf-ficking pathways are required for C. albi-cans hyphal growth and pathogenesis. Our results indicate that there are several distinct trafficking routes between the Golgi apparatus and vacuole. However, there is a large degree of functional over-lap between each with respect to their roles in hyphal growth and virulence. Herein we consider these results and pro-pose that during hyphal growth, specific trafficking routes maybe less important than the aggregate vacuolar trafficking capacity. © 2011 Landes Bioscience.