Trichophyton rubrum transcriptome analysis: insights into gene structure, expression, and regulation associated with pathogenicity

Abstract

Dermatophytes are a phylogenetically related group of filamentous fungi able to invade and colonize keratinized tissues in human and animals. These species can be classified as geophilic, zoophilic and anthropophilic, based on their preferable niches, such as soil, animals and humans, respectively. The genome of seven dermatophytes species was recently sequenced and comparative analysis have shown that these species present few differences among their genes and genome organization, presenting a high degree of collinearity and relatively few specific genes of each species. Although their high similarity, each species is adapted to a specific host. This niche specificity may be related to different regulation of virulence factors by each species, which may arise from the interaction of diverse constituents from the cell, such as proteins, DNA, RNA and also small molecules, such as non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). The proposal of this project is to evaluate the transcriptome of the anthropophilic dermatophyte species Trichophyton rubrum aiming to build a regulatory gene network in order to identify genes related to pathogenicity. It is also proposed the identification of ncRNAs and the transcriptional start sites of T. rubrum genes which can reveal important information regarding to gene structure and the mechanisms of gene regulation in this organism, also revealing mechanisms not yet known. The results obtained here will provide more detailed information on gene and genome structures and transcription profile related to pathogenicity of this organism which will be of great value for the dermatophytes research community, improving experimental design and also revealing interesting aspects of T. rubrum pathogenicity. (AU)