Plasma Membrane Phosphatidylinositol-4-Phosphate Is Not Necessary for Candida albicans Viability yet Is Key for Cell Wall Integrity and Systemic Infection
Rocío García‐Rodas, Hayet Labbaoui, François Orange, Norma V. Solis, Óscar Zaragoza, Scott G. Filler, Martine Bassilana, Robert A. Arkowitz
Abstract
While the PI-4-kinases Pik1 and Stt4 both produce PI(4)P, the former generates PI(4)P at the Golgi apparatus and the latter at the plasma membrane, and these two pools are functionally distinct. To address the importance of plasma membrane PI(4)P in Candida albicans, we generated deletion mutants of the three putative plasma membrane PI-4-kinase complex components and quantified the levels of plasma membrane PI(4)P in each of these strains. Our work reveals that this phosphatidylinositol phosphate is specifically critical for the yeast-to-hyphal transition, cell wall integrity, and virulence in a mouse systemic infection model. The significance of this work is in identifying a plasma membrane phospholipid that has an infection-specific role, which is attributed to the loss of plasma membrane PI(4)P resulting in β(1,3)-glucan unmasking.