Beyond the plasma membrane disruption: Novel antifungal mechanism of Neosartorya (Aspergillus) fischeri antifungal protein 2 in Candida albicans

Candida albicans is the most prevalent human pathogenic fungus, responsible for drug-resistant and fatal invasive infections which show an increasing trend in the past two decades. A promising new therapeutic approach involves NFAP2, an antifungal protein secreted by Neosartorya (Aspergillus) fischeri. NFAP2 exhibits potent antifungal activity on both planktonic and biofilm-forming Candida cells in vitro and in vivo. Despite this promising feature,the exact antifungal mechanism of NFAP2 remains in the shadow which hampers its therapeutic application. Based on our recent observations, we suppose that NFAP2 is taken up by Candida cells, and has a long-term growth-slowing effect. Our objective was to understand the molecular mechanism of the long-term growth slowing effect of NFAP2 in C. albicans, therefore the transcriptome of the NFAP2-treated (below the minimum inhibitory concentration) C. albicans SC5314 cultures was compared to that of the untreated ones.The transcriptional responses to NFAP2 were further characterized using functional enrichment analyses of Gene Ontology terms and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways. Overall design: RNA-seq comparison of C. albicans SC5314 cells with NFAP2 treated C. albicans SC5314 cells