Engineered yeast
Transcriptional landscape of a CRISPR/Cas9 engineered yeast pathogen during infection
USIAS Fellow : Fabrice Jossinet
Post-doc: Ludovic Enkler
Using the pathogenic yeast Candida glabrata as a model organism, the aim of our team is to better characterize the molecular entities involved in the infection process of this microorganism. To reach this goal, we combine bioinformatics and experimental approaches. Based on comparative genomic approaches, we try to identify molecular families and regulatory networks with species-specific features. Previous studies have shown the existence of such features in ncRNA families like RNase P or telomerase. In parallel, our team has recently characterize the transcriptional landscape of C. glabrata during infection of immunocompromised drosophila. Using total RNA-seq, we have identified several genomic loci of C. glabrata associated with differential expression during the infection process. Based on these preliminary results, our USIAS funding will allow us to construct a recombinant strain of C. glabrata expressing constitutively the CRISPR-Cas9 system. This recombinant strain will allows us to target the genomic loci characterized experimentally and the molecular families highlighted bioinformatically in order to test their role in the pathogenicity process.