title: Differences in extracellular enzymatic activity between Candida dubliniensis and Candida albicans isolates.
abstract: Twenty-six Candida dubliniensis and 27 Candida albicans oral strains isolated from patients infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) were tested for germ tube production and 21 extracellular enzymatic activities. Assessment of the enzymatic profile was performed by using the API-ZYM commercial kit system (bioMerieux, France), which tests 19 different enzymes. Protease activity was expressed during the first days of incubation by 100% of the strains studied and resulted higher than phospholipase activity in the C. dubliniensis and C. albicans strains tested. The API-ZYM profile of the C. dubliniensis and C. albicans strains differs with respect to the number and percentage of the enzymes considered, as well as with the intensity of the substrate metabolized by the strains, in particular for the enzymes n 8 (cystine-arylamidase), n 12 (naphtol-AS-BI-phosphohydrolase) and n 16 (alpha-glucosidase). These enzymes may be useful to differentiate C. dubliniensis and C. albicans together with other phenotypic characteristics proposed in the literature. No relationship among protease, phospholipase and other extracellular enzymatic activities was observed in C. dubliniensis. The average percentage of strains filamentation after 4 h was between 32 and 42%.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento Discipline Medico-Chirurgiche, Sezione Malattie Infettive, Universita di Torino, Turin, Italy. valerio.vidotto@libero.it
authors.forename: Valerio
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Vidotto
authors.forename: José
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pontón
authors.forename: Shigeji
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Aoki
authors.forename: Guillermo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Quindós
authors.forename: Bárbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Mantoan
authors.forename: Agostino
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pugliese
authors.forename: Shoko
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ito-Kuwa
authors.forename: Kenjirou
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nakamura
mesh_terms: D002175:Candida / Q000201:enzymology / Q000302:isolation & purification; D002176:Candida albicans / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D004798:Enzymes / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans
chemical_list: D004798:Enzymes