DM, cell surface area per C. albicans yeast or hypha and their ratios.

Table 1: To determine the DM per yeast cell at the indicated time points the correlation coefficient factors of DM versus time and cell number versus time were used. With these values the average yeast concentration (DM per ml) was divided by the total number of yeast cells per ml. Similarly, calculations were performed for hyphae. Cell numbers of the initial inoculum at OD 0.1 were used assuming that under hypha-inducing conditions each yeast cell germinates and grows as hypha. To calculate the cell surface area and volume of yeasts and hyphae at different time points, the dimensions (length, width and depth) of approximately 50 immune-stained cells were measured by confocal microscopy as described in materials and methods. The ratio of cell surface areas per µg DM and cell number per µg DM from yeasts and hyphae were calculated for different time points. Data are presented as average of three biological replicates ± SD.