Infection of epithelial cells by C. albicans requires adhesion of yeast form cells to the surface of epithelium, a process that aids in inducing a morphological switch resulting in hypha formation.
MgWOR1 encodes a transcription factor involved in morphological switches (yeast mycelium) and pathogenicity that is orthologous to WOR1 from Candida albicans and SGE1 from Fusarium oxysporum (Mirzadi Gohari et al., 2014).
In order to investigate the functional effects of the miR-200 family in melanoma, we decided to test whether expression of miR-200 family members affects the ability of melanoma cells to engage in morphological switching and use different modes of migration to invade into a physiologic 3D collagen-I matrix.
Knockdown of GAP19 showed no statistically significant effect on cell morphology while knockdown of RECK reduced cell rounding suggesting that in the morphological switch driven by miR-200c, the reduction of MARCKS levels by miR-200c is dominant over the effects of RECK reduction.
In Candida albicans, pleckstrin-like proteins are understood to be involved in virulence and morphological switching [ 57].
TGF- β treatment triggered a morphological switch from epithelial-to-mesenchymal phenotype in H358 cells and qPCR analyses revealed an EMT-TF expression profile consistent with an activated EMT pathway in TGF- β-treated H358 and A549 cells.
It has been proposed that gluconeogenesis and the glyoxylate cycle (see below) may be important for supplying carbohydrates for cell wall synthesis in other fungi which in turn may be linked to the morphological switch from mycelium to yeast [43].
Consistent with the observed morphological switch, kaempferol significantly reduced the expression of EMT-TFs in both H358_EMT and H358_R cells and concomitantly downregulated the stem cell genes in H358_R cells.
Importantly, control hyphae and hyphae developed in the presence of PK E6/E7 VECL could not be distinguished in terms of the timing of the morphological switch, rate of hyphae development, or length of hyphae and 1(c)).
The finding that development-related genes were significantly affected in our study may be related to growth arrest or to a morphological switch from the yeast to a filamentous or pseudohyphal growth triggered by nitrogen starvation in the presence of a fermentable carbon source, such as glucose [ 41].
