Cryptococcus deneoformans XL280 Raw sequence reads. Cryptococcus deneoformans XL280

The environmental human fungal pathogen, Cryptococcus neoformans, undergoes morphological and transcriptional adaptation in the switch from comensialism to pathogenicity. Previous studies have identified the master regulator, Znf2, directing the morphological transition, it remains unclear how ZNF2 is regulated to coordinate the switch. Investigating morphogenetic control by forward genetic approach has generated important regulatory insights into this process. Here we have identified the long noncoding RNA, RZE1, as an upstream regulatory of ZNF2. Relative to wild type strain, transcript profiling of RZE1 deletion mutants revealed that RZE1 affects the transcript level of ZNF2 and the Znf2-regulon genes, including CFL1, FAD1 and FAS1. Overall design: Strand specific RNA-seq comparing transcrip profiling of rze1△ strains to the respective wildtype strain XL280 on V8 mating-inducing media.