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Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, May 2001, p. 585-587, Vol. 8, No. 3
Department of Oral
Medicine1 and Department of
OCBS,2 Dental School, University of Maryland,
and Department of Pathology, The Johns Hopkins
University,3 Baltimore, Maryland
Received 20 October 2000/Returned for modification 15 December
2000/Accepted 27 February 2001
Hydrophobic interactions, based on cell surface hydrophobicity
(CSH), are among the many and varied mechanisms of adherence deployed
by the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans. Recently it was
shown that, unlike C. albicans, C. dubliniensis
is a species that exhibits an outer fibrillar layer consistent with
constant CSH. Previously, C. dubliniensis grown at 25 or
37°C was shown to coaggregate with the oral anaerobic bacterium
Fusobacterium nucleatum. C. albicans, however, demonstrated
similar coaggregation only when hydrophobic or grown at 25°C. This
observation implied that coaggregation of Candida cells
with F. nucleatum is associated with a hydrophobic yeast
cell surface. To test this hypothesis, 42 C. albicans and
40 C. dubliniensis clinical isolates, including a C. albicans hydrophobic variant, were grown at 25 and 37°C and tested with the established hydrophobicity microsphere assay, which
determines CSH levels based on the number of microspheres attached to
the yeast cells. The coaggregation assay was performed in parallel
experiments. All C. dubliniensis isolates grown at either
temperature, hydrophobic 25°C-grown C. albicans isolates, and the C. albicans hydrophobic variant, unlike the
37°C-hydrophilic C. albicans isolates, exhibited
hydrophobic CSH levels with the microsphere assay and simultaneously
showed maximum, 4+, coaggregation with F. nucleatum. The
parallel results obtained for C. dubliniensis using both
assays support the use of the CoAg assay both as a rapid assay to
determine CSH and to differentiate between C. dubliniensis and C. albicans.
1071-412X/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/CDLI.8.3.585-587.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
New Assay for Measuring Cell Surface
Hydrophobicities of Candida dubliniensis and
Candida albicans
*
Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Oral Medicine, Dental School, UMAB, 666 W. Baltimore St., Baltimore, MD
21201. Phone: (410) 708-7628. Fax: (410) 706-0519. E-mail: mrizk{at}umaryland.edu.
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