A chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay is a method
to identify how much a protein of interest binds to the DNA
region. This method is indispensable to study the mechanisms
of how the transcription factors or chromatin modifications
regulate the gene expression. Candida albicans is a dimorphic
pathogenic fungus, which can change its morphology very rapidly
from yeast to hypha in response to the environmental
signal. The morphological change of C. albicans is one of the
critical factors for its virulence. Therefore, it is necessary to
understand how to regulate the expression of genes for C.
albicans to change its morphology. One of the essential methods
for us to understand this regulation is a ChIP assay.
There have been many efforts to optimize the protocol to lower
the background signal and to analyze the results accurately
because a ChIP assay can provide very different results even
with slight differences in the experimental procedure. We
have optimized the rapid and efficient ChIP protocol so that
it could be applied equally for both yeast and hyphal forms of
C. albicans. Our method in this protocol is also comparatively
rapid to the method widely used. In this protocol, we described
our rapid method for the ChIP assay in C. albicans in
detail.
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Candida albicans is the most common opportunistic fungal
pathogen, which switches its morphology from single-cell
yeast to filament through the various signaling pathways responding
to diverse environmental cues. Various transcriptional
factors such as Nrg1, Efg1, Brg1, Ssn6, and Tup1 are
the key components of these signaling pathways. Since C.
albicans can regulate its transcriptional gene expressions using
common eukaryotic regulatory systems, its morphological
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transition of C. albicans collaborating with well-known
transcription factors in the signaling pathways. Here, we review
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transcription factors in the signaling pathways and histone
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We have examined the chromatin structure of the HMRE/HSP82 and HMRa/HSP82 allels using three complementary approaches : DNase I chromating footprinting, micrococcal nuclease (MNase) nucleosome-protected ladder assay, and an in vivo E. coli dam methylase accessibility assay. The footprinting results indicate that the promoter and silencer sequences are assembled into nucleoprotein complexes which exhibit no detectable change in structure, despite a 70-fold range in expression levels. In addition, the promoter region of the HMRa/HSP82 allele is cleaved randomly by MNase in all cases, indicating the absence of anonical nucleosomes over this region irrespective of SIR4 or heat-shock. Finally, no discernible difference in the accessibility of the HMRE/HSP82 locus to dam methylase in SIR4 vs. sir4 cells was seen, which again suggests that the chromatin structure of HMRE/HSP82 allele is identical regardless of SIR4. Altogether, our results indicate that in contrast to other observations of the silent mating-type loci, no discernible structural alteration is detected at either HMR/HSP82 allele regardless of SIR genetic background or transcriptional state of the gene.
Taking advantage of the heat inducible HSP82 gene in yeast, chromatin structure after transcription cessation was investigated. Alteration of chromating conformation within the HSP82 gene transcription unit into an active state has been shown to correlate with its transcriptional induction. It was thus of interest to examine whether the active chromatin state within the HSP82 mRNA analysis, the gene ceased its transcription within a few hours of cultivation at a normal condition after heat induction. In this condition, an active chromatin conformation in the HSP82 gene body was changed into an inactive state which was revealed by DNase I resistance and by typical nucleosomal cutting periodicity in the corresponding chromatin. These results thus ruled out the possibility of a long-term maintenance of the DNase I sensitive chromatin after transcription cessation. DNA replication may be a critical event for the chromatin reprogramming.