GSE168988
Transcriptome profile of tra1 mutant in C. albicans in response to the antifungal caspofungin
The emergence of drug-resistant fungal strains is a threat to human health. Identifying targets that increase the susceptibility of fungal pathogens to current therapies will significantly improve outcomes. Tra1 is an essential component of the SAGA and NuA4 transcriptional co-activator complexes and is linked to multiple cellular processes associated with the yeast response to antifungal drugs. This submission contains RNA sequencing data from Candida albicans strain expressing a Tra1 mutant with three arginine to glutamine mutations in the PI3K domain (tra1Q3; Berg et al., 2018) treated with or without the antifungal caspofungin. Our goal was to identify genes regulated by Tra1 in C. albicans and identify genes with differential responses in the mutant tra1 strain upon capsofungin relative to the wild-type strain. We identified 68 genes that were differentially expressed when the tra1Q3 strain was treated with caspofungin, as compared to gene expression changes induced by either tra1Q3 or caspofungin alone. Included in this set were genes involved in cell wall maintenance, adhesion and filamentous growth. As a critical component of both SAGA and NuA4, Tra1 is uniquely positioned to regulate the yeast antifungal response and emerges, through targeting its PI3K domain, as a promising new therapeutic target for fungal infections. Overall design: mRNA of strains expressing tra1Q3 compared to strains expressing wild type TRA1 with and without caspofungin treatment (10ng/ml for two hours)