Opportunistic pathogen that causes fungal meningitis

The environmental human fungal pathogen, Cryptococcus neoformans, undergoes morphological and transcriptional adaptation in the switch from comensialism to pathogenicity. Previous studies have identified that the master regulator, Znf2 directs morphological transition from yeast to hyphae. It remains unclear how ZNF2 is regulated to coordinate the switch. PAS domain proteins are known as signal transducers and regulators. Here we have identified the PAS protein, PAS3, as an upstream regulator of ZNF2. It interacts with chromatin modifier Bre1 in regulating filamentation. Relative to wild type strain, transcript profiling of PAS3 and BRE1 deletion mutants revealed that they function together in regulating the transcript level of ZNF2 and the Znf2 regulons. Overall design: Strand specific RNA-seq comparing transcrip profiling of pas3△ and bre1△ to the respective wildtype strain XL280 on V8 mating-inducing media.