Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Gordon, Donna M.

Committee Member

Klink, Vincent

Committee Member

Lu, Shien

Date of Degree

8-9-2019

Original embargo terms

Visible to MSU Only for 3 years

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Biological Sciences

Degree Name

Master of Science

Degree Name

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Biological Sciences

Department

Department of Biological Sciences

Abstract

Candida albicans is a polymorphic fungus that can grow as yeast (Y) and hypha (H). The Y-H morphological switching is controlled through the MAPK, Cek1p. With the prior work showing that occidiofungin prevents C. albicans from forming hypha when added at the time of Y-H switching, we aim to identify the impact of occidiofungin on signaling events associated with morphological switching specifically looking at Cek1 MAPK cascade. Results from this work have demonstrated that Cek1 MAPK is not required for occidiofungin bioactivity. Further, we report that morphologically switching cells are more sensitive to occidiofungin than their non-switching counterparts. Moreover, later stages of hyphal formation exhibit increased sensitivity towards occidiofungin suggesting occidiofungin targets hyphal initiation and/or elongation process. This work also demonstrates that addition of occidiofungin beyond a discrete time window required for hyphal initiation has minimal effect on hyphae formation and elongation.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/14509

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