title: Zebrafish Egg Infection Model for Studying Candida albicans Adhesion Factors.
abstract: Disseminated candidiasis is associated with 30-40% mortality in severely immunocompromised patients. Among the causal agents, Candida albicans is the dominant one. Various animal models have been developed for investigating gene functions in C. albicans. Zebrafish injection models have increasingly been applied in elucidating C. albicans pathogenesis because of the conserved immunity, prolific fecundity of the zebrafish and the low costs of care systems. In this study, we established a simple, noninvasive zebrafish egg bath infection model, defined its optimal conditions, and evaluated the model with various C. albicans mutant strains. The deletion of SAP6 did not have significant effect on the virulence. By contrast, the deletion of BCR1, CPH1, EFG1, or TEC1 significantly reduced the virulence under current conditions. Furthermore, all embryos survived when co-incubated with bcr1/bcr1, cph1/cph1 efg1/efg1, efg1/efg1, or tec1/tec1 mutant cells. The results indicated that our novel zebrafish model is time-saving and cost effective.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yin-Zhi
authors.initials: YZ
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Science and Technology, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.|Institute of Molecular Medicine and Bioengineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Yun-Liang
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Wen-Li
authors.initials: WL
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Molecular and Genomic Medicine, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan.
authors.forename: May-Su
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: You
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, National Health Research Institutes, Miaoli, Taiwan.|School of Dentistry, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hsiu-Jung
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Lo
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018441:Biofilms; D002176:Candida albicans / Q000502:physiology*; D002177:Candidiasis / Q000382:microbiology*; D004625:Embryo, Nonmammalian / Q000382:microbiology; D025301:Hyphae / Q000502:physiology; D010063:Ovum / Q000382:microbiology*; D046509:Tissue Culture Techniques; D015027:Zebrafish