Journal article

Congenic Strains for Genetic Analysis of Virulence Traits in Cryptococcus gattii

Pinkuan Zhu, Bing Zhai, Xiaorong Lin, Alexander Idnurm

INFECTION AND IMMUNITY | AMER SOC MICROBIOLOGY | Published : 2013

Abstract

Cryptococcus gattii is responsible for a large outbreak of potentially fatal disease that started in the late 1990s on Vancouver Island, Canada. How this fungus and the outbreak isolates in particular cause disease in immunocompetent people is unknown, with differing hypotheses. To explore genetic contributions, a pair of congenic a and α mating type strains was generated by a series of 11 backcrosses to introgress the MAT locus from a nonoutbreak strain into the background of strain R265, isolated from a Vancouver Island patient. The congenic pair was used to investigate three traits: mitochondrial inheritance, the effect of the MAT alleles on virulence, and the impact of a predicted virule..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Grants

Awarded by National Institutes of Health NIAID grants


Funding Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Chinese Scholarship Council (to P.Z.) and National Institutes of Health NIAID grants (AI097599 to X. L. and AI094364 to A.I.).