Research article

MFS transportome of the human pathogenic yeast Candida albicans

Manisha Gaur , Nidhi Puri , Raman Manoharlal , Versha Rai , Gauranga Mukhopadhayay , Devapriya Choudhury and Rajendra Prasad

BMC Genomics 2008, 9:579doi:10.1186/1471-2164-9-579

Published:	3 December 2008

Abstract (provisional)

Background

The major facilitator superfamily (MFS) is one of the two largest superfamilies of membrane transporters present ubiquitously in bacteria, archaea, and eukarya and includes members that function as uniporters, symporters or antiporters. We report here the complete transportome of MFS proteins of a human pathogenic yeast Candida albicans.

Results

Computational analysis of the C. albicans genome enabled us to identify 95 potential MFS proteins which clustered into 17 families using Saier's Transport Commission (TC) system. Among these SP, DHA1, DHA2 and ACS represented major families consisting of 22, 22, 9 and 16 members, respectively. Family designations in C. albicans were validated by subjecting Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome to TC system. The latter also suggested putative functions and preferred substrates for all the MFS members on the basis of homology. Based on the published available genomics/proteomics data, 87 of the putative MFS genes of C. albicans were found to express either at mRNA or protein levels. We checked the expression of the remaining 8 genes by using RT-PCR and observed that they are not expressed under basal growth conditions implying that either these 8 genes are expressed under specific growth conditions or they may be candidates for pseudogenes.

Conclusions

The in silico characterisation of MFS transporters in the Candida albicans genome revealed a large complement of MFS transporters with most of them showing expression. Considering the clinical relevance of C. albicans and role of MFS members in multidrug resistance and nutrient transport, this analysis would pave way for identifying their physiological relevance.