Grant: Operating Grant

Fungi such as molds and mushrooms often attack and destroy crop plants and stored food, but luckily not that many fungi directly attack humans. One of the most common of the fungi that do cause human disease is the yeast Candida albicans, which is the source of most yeast infections in women, and of thrush in infants and patients suffering with AIDS. Because the fungi that cause human disease have cells that work very similarly to human cells, they are hard to treat, because drugs that kill the fungi tend to also damage the human patient. As part of a long-term goal of finding new ways to treat Candida infections, we are investigating how these cells chose whether or not to divide to make new cells when they receive signals from outside the cell. Both human and fungal cells have similar motors that control the production of new cells, so we hope that by finding out the details of how Candida cells make the decisions to turn the division motor on or off we can find unique processes that the fungus uses that human cells do not. Because we can manipulate the genetic information of Candida cells very precisely, we can ask very specific questions about how controls of the division machinery work. If these processes are needed by the Candida cells to live, we may be able to block them and prevent the growth of the disease-causing organism without hurting the patient. While it would be nice to be able to cure yeast infections and thrush, Candida can cause even more serious, often fatal infections if it gets into the bloodstream of a patient. Thus identifying new ways to cure Candida infections by studying the way the cells control the production of new cells may help us save lives.