Using RNA-seq to determine the transcriptional landscape and the hypoxic response of the pathogenic yeast Candida parapsilosis

Candida parapsilosis is one of the most common causes of Candida infection worldwide. However, the genome sequence annotation was made without experimental validation and little is known about the transcriptional landscape. The transcriptional response of C. parapsilosis to hypoxic (low oxygen) conditions, such as those encountered in the host, is also relatively unexplored.

We provide the first detailed annotation of the C. parapsilosis genome, based on gene predictions and transcriptional analysis. We identified a number of novel ORFs and other transcribed regions, and detected transcripts from approximately 90% of the annotated protein coding genes. We found that the transcription factor Upc2 role has a conserved role as a major regulator of the hypoxic response in C. parapsilosis and C. albicans.

We used next generation sequencing (RNA-seq) to determine the transcriptional profile of C. parapsilosis growing in several conditions including different media, temperatures and oxygen concentrations. We identified 395 novel protein-coding sequences that had not previously been annotated. We removed > 300 unsupported gene models, and corrected approximately 900. We mapped the 5' and 3' UTR for thousands of genes. We also identified 422 introns, including two introns in the 3' UTR of one gene. This is the first report of 3' UTR introns in the Saccharomycotina. Comparing the introns in coding sequences with other species shows that small numbers have been gained and lost throughout evolution. Our analysis also identified a number of novel transcriptional active regions (nTARs). We used both RNA-seq and microarray analysis to determine the transcriptional profile of cells grown in normoxic and hypoxic conditions in rich media, and we showed that there was a high correlation between the approaches. We also generated a knockout of the UPC2 transcriptional regulator, and we found that similar to C. albicans, Upc2 is required for conferring resistance to azole drugs, and for regulation of expression of the ergosterol pathway in hypoxia.