Interaction of soil amoeba Protostelium aurantium with three pathogenic yeasts Candida spp. (here: C. albicans and C. glabrata)

We investigated different escape and defense strategies of Candida glabrata and Candida albicans against the natural fungivorous predator Protostelium aurantium using dual RNA-Seq. While C. albicans was found to be very succesfull in preventing from amoeba recognition, C. glabrata in turn, was rapidly taken up but remained undigested with a comparably low transcriptional activity. Trophozoites of the amoeba Protostelium aurantium were fed seperately with the two fungal species and samples for RNA isolation were taken at time points 0 min (control), 30 min and 60 min. At indicated time points samples were shock frozen and used for RNA isolation. Samples for RNAseq were taken at time points 0 min (control), 30 min and 60 min. RNA samples from identical timepoints for C. albicans and C. glabrata were pooled for RNA sequencing. We investigated different escape and defense strategies of Candida spp. against natural fungivorous predator. While C. parapsilosis underwent rapid predation and intracellular killing of the yeast, C. albicans was found to be very succesfull in preventing from amoeba recognition. C. glabrata in turn, was rapidly taken up but remained undigested with a comparably low transcriptional activity. Analysis of nine samples in total. Three time points (0min, 30min and 60min) with three replicates each. The three 0min samples are the control samples.