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Address correspondence to Bryan Larsen, Ph.D., Des Moines University-Osteopathic Medical Center, 3200 Grand Avenue, Des Moines, IA 50312, USA; tel 515 271 1559; fax 515 271 1644; e-mail bryan.larsen{at}dmu.edu.
| Abstract |
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(received 24 July 2002; accepted 19 September 2002)
Keywords: Candida albicans, estrogen, heat-shock, hsp90, cell surface protein
| Introduction |
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C. albicans contains one essential hsp90 gene [10] that shares 84% homology with Saccharomyces cerevisiae hsp82. Although the physiological role of C. albicans hsp90 has yet to be elucidated, over expression of hsp90 in S. cerevisiae has been reported to increase the virulence of this organism for mice [11], adding support for its designation as a virulence factor. Antibody against a 47-kDa antigen was identified in patients who recovered from systemic candidiasis [12], and the eliciting antigen appears to be part of the C-terminal portion of C. albicans hsp90 [10,13]. Antibodies against the 47-kDa C-terminal portion of hsp90 reportedly cross-reacted with a 92-kDa heat-inducible protein, identified as the native hsp90 [14], while a clone of C. albicans hsp90 [10] and subsequent antibody studies [15,16] suggest that native Candida hsp90 actually has a mass of approximately 80-kDa.
Immuno-electronmicroscopy using mono-specific antibodies has localized the 47-kDa antigen to the cytoplasm and cell wall of cultured C. albicans [17]. These studies suggest that hsp90 localized to the cell wall was already cleaved, by a yet to be described cellular process producing the 47-kDa antigen. In this report, we use isolated Candida hsp90 and an anti-C. albicans hsp90 to determine the mass of native Candida hsp90, and to show that in addition to the cytoplasmic pool, native hsp90 is located in the cell wall of C. albicans.
| Materials and Methods |
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Isolation of C. albicans hsp90. C. albicans hsp90 was purified using a modification of the methods described by Srivastava [18]. Yeast cells were grown in yeast peptone dextrose (YPD) medium to early-or mid-log phase at 25°C. The cells were pelleted by centrifugation at 3000 x g for 5 min at room temperature. The cell pellet was resuspended in 1.4 ml of TE buffer (100 mM Tris, 100 mM EDTA, pH 8.0)/g wet cells and osmotically shocked by addition of deionized water to a final volume of 3.5 ml/g wet cells. Mercaptoethanol (17.5 µl/g wet cells) was added and the cells were incubated for 45 min at 30°C with gentle shaking. The cells were pelleted as previously described and washed with 4.0 ml/g wet cells of S buffer (1.0 M sorbitol, 10 mM PIPES, pH 6.5). The washed cells were resuspended in S buffer (4.0 ml/g wet cells) and zymolyase 20T (50 U/g wet cells) and incubated at 30°C for 1 hr with gentle shaking. Spheroplasts were collected by centrifugation for 5 min at 3000 x g and 4°C and washed twice with S buffer (2 ml/g wet cells).
Spheroplasts were lysed by suspension in 5 ml of deionized water followed by addition 5 ml of lysis buffer (40 mM Tris, 2 mM EDTA, 100 mM NaCl, 1mM DTT, pH 7.4, 1 Mini-Complete Protease Inhibitor Tablet, Boehringer Mannheim Gmbh, Mannheim, Germany). Cell debris was removed by centrifugation (20,000 x g at 4°C) for 1 hr.
The lysate was applied to a 15 ml DE-52 anion-exchange column equilibrated with 20 mM Tris, 1 mM EDTA, 50 mM NaCl, pH7.4. Hsp90 was eluted with the same buffer by a linear gradient from 50 mM to 500 mM NaCl. Fractions containing hsp90 were identified by SDS-PAGE gel electrophoresis and dialyzed against 10 mM potassium phosphate pH 6.8. The dialyzed fractions were loaded on a 10 ml hydroxyapatite column equilibrated with the same buffer. Hsp90 was eluted by a linear gradient from 10 mM to 400 mM potassium phosphate pH 6.8. Fractions containing hsp90 were identified by SDS-PAGE gel electrophoresis.
Electrophoresis and Western blotting. Proteins were separated on 7.5% discontinuous polyacrylamide gels as described by Laemmli [19,20]. Gels were stained with coomassie blue stain (Gelcode Blue, Pierce Chemical Co., Rockford, IL). For Western blots, the protein bands on SDS-Page gels were transferred to PVDF membranes for peptide sequencing or nitrocelluslose membranes for Western blotting as described by Towbin et al [21] and Burnette [22]. The hsp90 band was detected by incubating the membranes for 1 hr at room temperature with the anti-Candida hsp90 polyclonal antibody (described below), followed by a 1 hr incubation with horseradish peroxidase-conjugated secondary antibodies (Southern Biotechnology Assoc, Inc., Birmingham, AL). Antibody binding was detected with horseradish peroxidase chemiluminescent substrate (Supersignal West Dura Extended Duration Substrate, Pierce), using a Fluor-S Multi-Imager (BioRad Laboratories, Hercules, CA) and MultiAnalyst software (BioRad).
N-terminal sequence analysis. Samples were separated by SDS-PAGE gel electrophoresis and blotted to PVDF membranes as described above. The membrane was stained with Ponceau S. The 82-kDa band was excised from the membrane and washed 6 times with de-ionized water. The N-terminal sequence was determined by sequential Edman degradation [23,24] using a 492 Procise Protein Sequencer/140C Analyzer (Applied Biosystems, Inc., Forest City, CA)
Polyclonal antibody production. Two rabbits were injected with a synthetic peptide corresponding to the C-terminal 15 amino acids of Candida hsp90 [25] coupled to keyhole limpet hemocyanin (Zymed Labs, South San Francisco, CA). This peptide contained the previously described epitope STDEPAGESA found in the 47-kDa fragment of Candida hsp90 [14,26].
Dot blots with anti-Candida hsp90. Dot blots employed a modification of the method described by Burt et al [27] to measure estradiol induction of hsp90 in C. albicans. Cultures of C. albicans were grown to mid-log phase at 25°C under similar conditions as described by OConnor and coworkers [7]. The cultures were treated with either 10-6 M 1,3,5[10]-estratriene-3,17ß-diol (17-ß-estradiol) (Sigma Chemical Co., St. Louis, Mo.), 10-9 M 17-ß-estradiol, methanol (volume equal to that used in estradiol cultures), or heat shock at 42°C for 30 min. The cells were pelleted by centrifugation at 3000 x g for 5 min at room temperature. The pellets were resuspended in 100 µl of breaking buffer (100 mM NaCl, 1 mM EDTA, 65 mM Tris pH 8.0) with 10 µl of protease inhibitor cocktail (Sigma). One hundred µl of acid washed, 425600 mm glass beads were added, and the tubes were shaken in a reciprocating cell disrupter at 3,000 strokes/min for five 1-min cycles, with 1 min incubations on ice between each cycle. After disruption, the samples were centrifuged (12,000 x g) for 5 min and the supernatant was collected. The protein concentration of the supernatant was determined using the BCA protein assay (Pierce).
Thirty µl of each supernatant was loaded onto nitrocellulose strips using a dot-blot apparatus (BioRad). The nitrocellulose was placed in blocking buffer (PBS-Tween, 5% dry milk) for 1 hr. The dot-blots were probed with the same antibodies used for Western blotting. Chemiluminescent HRP substrate (the same as used for Western blots) was used for detection of antibody complexes. Dot-blots were scanned with the Fluor-S MultiImager and densitometry was performed with the MultiAnalyst software.
Cell surface protein extraction. Proteins were extracted from the cell wall using the method described by Kanbe et al [28]. Yeast cells were grown to mid-log phase at 25°C in yeast nitrogen base. The cells were washed with deionized water and 0.1 M EDTA, pH 7.5. The protein was extracted from the surface of the cells by suspending the cell in 0.3 M 2-mercaptoethanol, 0.1 M EDTA, pH 9.0, for 30 min with gentle agitation. Cells were removed by centrifugation and the supernatant either dialyzed against deionized water and lyophilized or concentrated and dialyzed in a single step using Centricon filters. Protein samples were subjected to western blotting as described above.
Flow cytometry. A log-phase culture of C. albicans was divided into two treatment groups; one group was used as the control and the second was heat-shocked at 42°C for 30 min. Each treatment group was then divided in half. The first half was diluted 1:100 with YNB growth media and probed with 20 µl of FITC labeled antibody per ml of diluted cells. Prior to being diluted and probed with the FITC labeled antibody, the second half was stripped of cell surface proteins, using the method described above. Cell fluorescence (Fl1-H) was determined using a Becton Dickinson FACScan flow cytometer and plotted as mean channel fluorescence.
| Results |
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The N-terminal sequence of the 82-kDa protein was determined and compared to the SWISS-PROT database. The N-terminal 20 amino acids of the 82-kDa band were identical to the sequence predicted from the open reading frame of the previously described hsp90 cDNA [10] (Table 1
). The only difference between the sequence of the isolated protein and the predicted sequences was the deletion of the N-terminal methionine residue predicted by the open reading frame (common in eukaryotic proteins). The predicted primary structure of C. albicans hsp90 does not contain any identifiable signal sequences or other sequences that predict proteolytic processing of the protein. Therefore, the N-terminal sequence supports the molecular weight predicted by the nucleotide sequence of the open reading frame and the identification of this protein with a mass of approximately 82-kDa as Candida hsp90 [15,16].
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| Discussion |
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It is therefore possible that in the vacuole of Candida, ycaB forms the 47-kDa antigen, which is then released during lytic events of the immune response. The report by Matthews et al [17] that the 47-kDa antigen could be detected in vesicles by immuno-electronmicroscopy further supports this hypothesis of the origin of the 47-kDa fragment. Finally, since protease B expression in S. cerevisiae is stimulated by glucose or nitrogen starvation, it can be considered a stress protein. As such, the activation of ycaB during candidal infection may be a stress response related to the estrogen and heat induction of Candida hsp90.
Estrogen has been linked to the pathogenesis of C. albicans by the demonstration of estrogen stimulated Candida growth [5] and yeast to hyphal transition [4]. Hodgetts, et al [11] reported that over-expression hsp90 in S. cerevisiae increased the virulence of this fungus in mice and therefore hsp90 appears to be a virulence factor of C. albicans. The estrogen induction of cytoplasmic hsp90, as seen in Fig. 1
, suggests that estrogens role in pathogenesis is at least partially linked to the cellular functions of Candida hsp90.
By stimulating hsp90 production, estrogen may affect the virulence of C. albicans by direct or indirect regulation of hsp90s putative role in cell cycle control [3234] via interactions with signal transduction proteins. This may involve the role of hsp90 in the activation or stabilization of key signal transduction and cell cycle regulator proteins. Hsp90 may also be involved in the folding or conformational stability of other estrogen-induced proteins that appear to be necessary for the change in cellular function and pathogenic development [27]. While these putative functions of hsp90 appear to be wide ranging, both in the cellular systems affected and in the types of protein complexes formed, the fact that hsp90 lacks ligand specificity [35] supports the broad and multiple functions of the protein.
Currently, a major function of surface hsp90 appears to be antigen presentation [35] to MHC Class I molecules. Related to this function, surface hsp90 may be among cell surface markers used by the immune system to identify cells as "self." As might be expected with such a cell surface marker, antibodies against hsp90 are frequently associated with autoimmune diseases [34]. Therefore, the high degree of homology between Candida hsp90 and human hsp90 suggests that surface hsp90 may serve to camouflage Candida cells from the immune system, allowing the yeast to exist in the normal human flora and become pathogenic. Since patients that recover from systemic candidiasis have high antibody titers against the 47-kDa antigen [12], ie, the C-terminal portion of hsp90 [10], recovery from systemic candidiasis may involve ability of an individuals immune system to detect the differences between human hsp90 and Candida hsp90.
The 47-kDa antigen being the C-terminal portion of Candida hsp90 is consistent with the lower homology seen between the C-terminal portions of human and Candida hsp90 relative to the homology observed between the N-terminal portions of these proteins. Full-length hsp90 on the surface of C. albicans cells also implies the possibility that the immune response to fragments of hsp90 in recovering patients is actually an autoimmune type response to full-length hsp90 found on the surface the fungal cells. If this hypothesis is correct, it could indicate why development of an immune therapy has not been successful.
In contrast to cytoplasmic extracts, cell surface extracts do not contain any of the hsp90 fragments seen in Fig. 2a
, or described by Panaretou et al [15]. This suggests that the 47-kDa antigen found in the serum of candidiasis patients must result from either the lysis of Candida cells or the degradation of the hsp90 found on the cell surface. The results reported here support the recent suggestion that one or more cytoplasmic proteases cleaves fungal hsp90 to produce the 47-kDa fragment [15]. If recovery from systemic infection depends on an ability to mount and sustain an immune response to these fragments [36,12], an immune therapy directed toward these fragments could improve survival [37], while release of proteolytic fragments of hsp90 from disrupted cells could produce a toxic effect on the host.
| Acknowledgements and In Memoriam |
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| References |
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