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Up-Regulation of Antimicrobial Peptides Gallerimycin and Galiomicin in Galleria mellonella Infected with Candida Yeasts Displaying Different Virulence Traits

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Abstract

Galleria mellonella has been described as a cheap and an easy-to-reproduce model for the study of fungal infections. We hypothesized that yeasts with higher virulence potential decrease survival and significantly trigger an immune response in G. mellonella through the regulation of innate immunity-related genes encoding antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) such as gallerimycin and galiomicin. Candida albicans SC5314 and Candida dubliniensis CBS 7987, selected because of their different virulence potential, were used for a killing assay followed by the determination of gene expression using qPCR. In vivo results confirmed a significantly (p = 0.0321) lower pathogenicity for C. dubliniensis than for C. albicans. Accordingly, the induction of C. dubliniensis AMPs was lower at all the selected time points post-infection (1 h, 24 h, 48 h). Moreover, we observed an extremely high regulation of the galiomicin gene compared to the gallerimycin one, suggesting a different role of the tested AMPs in protecting G. mellonella from candidiasis.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under Contract No. [APVV-15-0347 to H.B.] and by the Grant VEGA [1/0628/15 to H.B.] supported by the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic. The authors wish to thank Dr. Stanislava Dižová for help with the qPCR technique.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology and Virology, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava, Ilkovičova 6, 84215, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Jaroslava Dekkerová-Chupáčová & Helena Bujdáková

  2. Department of Health Sciences, San Paolo Medical School, Università degli Studi di Milano, 8 Via A. di Rudini 8, 20142, Milan, Italy

    Elisa Borghi & Giulia Morace

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  1. Jaroslava Dekkerová-Chupáčová
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  2. Elisa Borghi
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  3. Giulia Morace
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  4. Helena Bujdáková
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Correspondence to Helena Bujdáková.

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Handling Editor: Mario Augusto Ono.

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Dekkerová-Chupáčová, J., Borghi, E., Morace, G. et al. Up-Regulation of Antimicrobial Peptides Gallerimycin and Galiomicin in Galleria mellonella Infected with Candida Yeasts Displaying Different Virulence Traits. Mycopathologia 183, 935–940 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11046-018-0300-7

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