Global Transcriptomic Analysis of Candida Albicans

Abstract

Candida albicans is a very common fungal pathogen that can cause major lifethreatening infections to immunocompromised individuals. A key aspect of the virulence of this fungus is its ability to transition from yeast to filamentous form. Previous studies have shown that a phosphatase enzyme, Ppg1 plays a roll in filamentation, and deleting this enzyme can decrease the virulence of the fungus. This study aimed to study the genetic networks involved in the filamentation process through both wildtype and Ppg1 – deleted strains using a weighted gene co-expression network analysis. Through a PyWGCNA, key gene modules correlated with filamentation were detected among the strains. The snow module showed a significant differential expression between the wildtype and Ppg1-deleted strains during the filamentation samples at hours 3 and 5. A Gene Ontology (GO) analysis of the top 25 genes within the snow module were reveled to be enriched in the biological processes such as transport, organelle organization, regulatory activities, and molecular functions were also revealed to include hydrolase and ligase. These findings suggest that Ppg1 plays a regulatory role in coordinating these processes to facilitate filamentation and the mechanisms uncovered offers a potential target for therapeutic purposes. Future research could leverage graph neural networks (GNN’s) to model the complex interactions with the network and identify new regulatory genes or pathways.

Date of Award	30 Aug 2024
Original language	American English
Supervisor	Aamna Alshehhi (Supervisor)