Open AccessCandida albicans , a distinctive fungal model for cellular aging study
Author(s) -
Fu XiaoHong,
Meng FeiLong,
Hu Yan,
Zhou JinQiu
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
aging cell
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 140
eISSN - 1474-9726
pISSN - 1474-9718
DOI - 10.1111/j.1474-9726.2008.00424.x
Subject(s) - schizosaccharomyces pombe , biology , candida albicans , saccharomyces cerevisiae , yeast , model organism , schizosaccharomyces , microbiology and biotechnology , gene , cellular aging , corpus albicans , genetics , telomere
Summary The unicellular eukaryotic organisms represent the popular model systems to understand aging in eukaryotes. Candida albicans , a polymorphic fungus, appears to be another distinctive unicellular aging model in addition to the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe . The two types of Candida cells, yeast (blastospore) form and hyphal (filamentous) form, have similar replicative lifespan. Taking the advantage of morphologic changes, we are able to obtain cells of different ages. Old Candida cells tend to accumulate glycogen and oxidatively damaged proteins. Deletion of the SIR2 gene causes a decrease of lifespan, while insertion of an extra copy of SIR2 extends lifespan, indicating that like in S. cerevisiae , Sir2 regulates cellular aging in C. albicans . Interestingly, Sir2 deletion does not result in the accumulation of extra‐chromosomal rDNA molecules, but influences the retention of oxidized proteins in mother cells, suggesting that the extra‐chromosomal rDNA molecules may not be associated with cellular aging in C. albicans . This novel aging model, which allows efficient large‐scale isolation of old cells, may facilitate biochemical characterizations and genomics/proteomics studies of cellular aging, and help to verify the aging pathways observed in other organisms including S. cerevisiae .