Portrait of Candida albicans Adherence Regulators
Figure 2
Gene expression profiles of adherence mutants.
Panel A. Hierarchical clustering of gene expression data. NanoString expression data (Table S2) were analyzed as described in Methods. Briefly, averages of three independent determinations for each mutant strain were divided by averages of six independent determinations of the reference wild-type strain DAY185 to obtain the fold change values for each of 293 genes. All mutant strains were insertion homozygotes except for ace2, arg81, crz2, zap1, and zfu2, which were deletion homozygotes. Transcription factor mutants with adherence defects are indicated with underlined gene names; the remaining mutants were controls included for comparison. Color scale limits were set at (−2.0, 0.0, 2.0), so that the brightest yellow represents 4 fold up-regulation compared to wild-type, and the brightest blue represents 4 fold down-regulation. We define the clusters by representative genes. HYVIR: over 50% of the genes in this cluster are known to play roles in hyphal growth or virulence. RAM: top targets of Ace2 (Regulation of Ace2 and polarized morphogenesis), which are also regulated by Cbk1, Snf5, Cas5, Bcr1, and Met4. ZAPT: known Zap1 targets. CSTAR: Cell surface targets of adherence regulators. Additional small clusters of co-regulated genes did not have unifying functional or structural features. Panel B. Summary of regulatory relationships among the 30 adherence regulators, Zap1, and the four clusters of target genes defined in panel 2A. Black circles: target gene clusters. Yellow circles: transcription factors. Yellow circles with black border: adherence regulators whose defects in adherence can be rescued by ZAP1 overexpression. Blue lines: negative regulation for at least 2/3 of the target genes in the cluster. Orange lines: positive regulation for at least 2/3 of the target genes in the cluster.