Background

In the last three decades the species of Candida have been of great interest due to the high mortality rates that they cause in immunocompromised and hospitalized patients. These species are opportunistic pathogens and they have inhabited other environments long before colonizing human cells. Among these environments we find wastewater from mines, and water from aquifers and soils that contain high concentrations of precious metals as well as toxic and base metals.

Aims

The aim of this study was to assess whether Candida albicans and Candida glabrata are able to maintain homeostasis in the presence of zinc, copper, cobalt or silver.

Methods

To achieve the objective, each of the Candida species was exposed to every single metal individually in a salt solution. Subsequently the treated cells were lysed to evaluate the compounds formed by means of Scanning Electron Microscopy-Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS).

Results

When analyzing the compounds that both C. albicans and C. glabrata formed in the presence of each of the metals, we found that they had synthesized silver sulfide (Ag₂S), cobalt sulfate (CoSO₄), zinc phosphate (Zn₃(PO₄)₂), or copper oxide (CuO).

Conclusions

Our results indicate that both C. albicans and C. glabrata have enzymatic and non-enzymatic mechanisms that allow them to achieve homeostasis in a different specific manner for each of the single metals to which they were exposed. To our knowledge, this is the first work reporting that C. albicans and C. glabrata can reduce different metals, with the subsequent formation of sulfides, sulfates, phosphates and oxides. This ability, developed over time by these Candida species, is probably a kind of biochemical mechanism in order to survive and colonize many different environments, from water or soil to humans. For this reason, C. albicans and C. glabrata make up an excellent model of study, both from a medical and biotechnical point of view.

中文翻译：

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白色念珠菌和光滑念珠菌对化合物的生物合成。

背景

在过去的三十年中，念珠菌的种类引起了人们极大的兴趣，因为它们在免疫力低下和住院患者中引起很高的死亡率。这些物种是机会病原体，很早在定居人类细胞之前就已经居住在其他环境中。在这些环境中，我们发现矿山废水，含水层和土壤中的水含有高浓度的贵金属以及有毒和贱金属。

目的

这项研究的目的是评估白色念珠菌和光滑念珠菌在锌，铜，钴或银的存在下是否能够维持体内稳态。

方法

为了实现该目的，将每种念珠菌物种分别在盐溶液中暴露于每种金属。随后将经处理的细胞裂解以通过扫描电子显微镜-能量色散X射线光谱法（SEM-EDS）评估形成的化合物。

结果

在分析白色念珠菌和光滑念珠菌在每种金属的存在下形成的化合物时，我们发现它们已经合成了硫化银（Ag ₂ S），硫酸钴（CoSO ₄），磷酸锌（Zn ₃（ PO ₄）₂）或氧化铜（CuO）。

结论

我们的结果表明，白色念珠菌和光滑念珠菌都具有酶促和非酶促机制，使它们能够以不同的特定方式针对其所接触的每种金属实现稳态。据我们所知，这是第一份报道白色念珠菌和光滑念珠菌可以还原不同金属并随后形成硫化物，硫酸盐，磷酸盐和氧化物的工作。这些念珠菌随着时间的推移而发展起来的这种能力，可能是一种生物化学机制，可以生存并在从水或土壤到人类的许多不同环境中生存。因此，白色念珠菌和glabrata念珠菌 从医学和生物技术的角度来看，它构成了一个极好的研究模型。