Investigating the relation of repeat sequences and pathogenesis of Candida albicans

• Main Authors: Shih, Chun-Jung, 施春榮
• Other Authors: 楊昀良
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/71641584737688307740

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 生物資訊及系統生物研究所 === 100 === Candida albicans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen that causes oral and vaginal mucosal infections as well as systemic diseases. In recent years, the discovery of the trinucleotide repeat diseases in human has brought interests to tandem repeats. Tandem repeats regions are common in yeast FLO adhesins, but their structures are unknown, and their activities are poorly understood. In bacteria and yeasts FLO, coding repeats in cell wall proteins are associated with alterations in immunogenicity, adhesion, and pathogenesis. Deletion of one such gene may result in a phenotype characterized by rapid conidial germination and reduced adherence to extracellular matrix. Both phenotypes are associated with virulence. Hence, I am interested to know, whether the association between tandem repeats and virulence is also present in Candida albicans. I have acquired the sequences and frequency of ORF containing tandem repeats by computation strategies. I created a program based on Knuth Morris Pratt (KMP) algorithm. Secondly, I acquired ORFs containing repeat sequences and the frequency of the repeats utilizing this program. Then I surveyed the literature to check the known functions of those genes. I found that some of them have activities related to pathogenicity, especially for the with window size larger then 4 and repeat frequency between 2~4, as well as the window size small or equal to 4 and repeat frequency larger then 4.