A CTG clade Candida yeast genetically engineered for the genotype-phenotype characterization of azole antifungal resistance in human pathogenic yeasts [PublishAheadOfPrint]

A strain of the opportunistic pathogenic yeast Candida lusitaniae was genetically modified for its use as a cellular model for assessing by allele replacement the impact of lanosterol C14α-demethylase ERG11 mutations on azole resistance. Candida lusitaniae was chosen because it is susceptible to azole antifungals, it belongs to the CTG clade of yeast which includes most of the Candida species pathogenic for humans, and it is haploid and easily amenable to genetic transformation and molecular modeling. In this work, allelic replacement is targeted at the ERG11 locus by the reconstitution of a functional auxotrophic marker in the 3' intergenic region of ERG11. Homologous and heterologous ERG11 alleles are expressed from the resident ERG11 promoter of C. lusitaniae, allowing accurate comparison of the phenotypic change in azole susceptibility. As a proof of concept, we successfully expressed in C. lusitaniae different ERG11 alleles – bearing or not mutations retrieved from clinical context - from two phylogenetically distant yeasts, C. albicans and Kluyveromyces marxianus. Candida lusitaniae constitutes a high fidelity expression system, giving specific Erg11p-dependent fluconazole MICs very close to those observed with the ERG11 donor strain. This work led to characterize the phenotypic effect of two kinds of mutation: mutation conferring decreased fluconazole susceptibility in a species-specific manner, and mutation conferring fluconazole resistance in several yeast species. In particular, a missense mutation affecting the amino acid K143 of Erg11p in Candida species, and the equivalent position K151 in K. marxianus, plays a critical role in fluconazole resistance.

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