THE unique function of ergosterol as the parent substance of vitamin D made it desirable to find a colour reaction for it, by means of which it could be detected in the presence of other sterols. In searching for such a reaction, the property of formaldehyde of shifting the colour from the red into the blue part of the spectrum in the usual colour reactions of sterols [Whitby, 1923; Rosenheim, ...

Metabolomics is providing new dimensions into understanding the intracellular adaptive responses in plants to external stimuli. In this study, a multi-technology-metabolomic approach was used to investigate the effect of the fungal sterol, ergosterol, on the metabolome of cultured tobacco cells. Cell suspensions were treated with different concentrations (0-1000 nM) of ergosterol and incubated ...

Langmuir surface pressure, small-angle neutron scattering (SANS), and neutron reflectivity (NR) studies have been performed to determine how formulation of the antifungal drug amphotericin B (AmB), with sodium cholesteryl sulfate (SCS)-as in Amphotec-affects its interactions with ergosterol-containing (model fungal cell) and cholesterol-containing (model mammalian cell) membranes. The effects o...

Abstract White-button ( Agaricus bisporus ) and shiitake Lentinula edodes mushrooms are widely consumed worldwide because of their organoleptic properties but also bioactive compounds such as β-glucans, ergosterol, phenolic compounds. Although these can be eaten raw food, they usually subjected to household cooking treatments, so effect on the stability molecules was evaluated in this work. The...

Due to an altered expression of oncogenic factors and tumor suppressors, aggressive cancer cells have an intrinsic or acquired resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. This typically contributes to cancer recurrence after chemotherapy. microRNAs are short non-coding RNAs that are involved in both cell self-renewal and cancer development. Here we report that tumor cells transfected with miR-378 ac...

Beneficial mutations are required for adaptation to novel environments, yet the range of mutational pathways that are available to a population has been poorly characterized, particularly in eukaryotes. We assessed the genetic changes of the first mutations acquired during adaptation to a novel environment (exposure to the fungicide, nystatin) in 35 haploid lines of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Th...

In mammals, hypoxia causes facilitated erythropoiesis that requires increased iron availability with established links between oxygen and iron in regulation of the transcription factor hypoxia-inducible factor. Therefore, cellular responses to hypoxia and iron starvation are linked in mammals and are host conditions that pathogens encounter during infection. In human pathogenic fungi, molecular...

We investigated the effects of the hypoxia-mimetic CoCl2 in the pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans and demonstrated that CoCl2 leads to defects in several enzymatic steps in ergosterol biosynthesis. Sterol defects were amplified in cells lacking components of the Sre1p-mediated oxygen-sensing pathway. Consequently, Sre1p and its binding partner Scp1p were essential for growth in the pres...

The ortholog of the human gene NPC1 was identified in the plant pathogenic, filamentous fungus Fusarium graminearum by shared amino acid sequence, protein domain structure and cellular localization of the mature fungal protein. The FusariumNpc1 gene shares 34% amino acid sequence identity and 51% similarity to the human gene, has similar domain structure and is constitutively expressed, althoug...

Systemic and invasive mycoses caused by primary and opportunistic fungal pathogens have been emerging as global problems because of the increase in the number of immunocompromised individuals, due to solid-organ transplants, anti-cancer chemotherapy, and extended human lifespan. A recent report estimated that fungal pathogens, such as Cryptococcus neoformans, Candida albicans, and Aspergillus f...