Candida albicans: A Model Organism for Studying Fungal Pathogens

Abstract

Candida albicansis an opportunistic human fungal pathogen that causes candidiasis. As healthcare has been improved worldwide, the number of immunocompromised patients has been increased to a greater extent and they are highly susceptible to various pathogenic microbes andC. albicanshas been prominent among the fungal pathogens. The complete genome sequence of this pathogen is now available and has been extremely useful for the identification of repertoire of genes present in this pathogen. The major challenge is now to assign the functions to these genes of which 13% are specific toC. albicans. Due to its close relationship with yeastSaccharomyces cerevisiae, an edge over other fungal pathogens because most of the technologies can be directly transferred toC. albicansfromS. cerevisiaeand it is amenable to mutation, gene disruption, and transformation. The last two decades have witnessed enormous amount of research activities on this pathogen that leads to the understanding of host-parasite interaction, infections, and disease propagation. Clearly,C. albicanshas emerged as a model organism for studying fungal pathogens along with other two fungiAspergillus fumigatusandCryptococcus neoformans. Understanding its complete life style ofC. albicanswill undoubtedly be useful for developing potential antifungal drugs and tacklingCandidainfections. This will also shed light on the functioning of other fungal pathogens.