Candida albicans colonizes the gastrointestinal tract of up to 75 % healthy individuals. It usually cohabits the gut as an innocuous commensal. But in critically ill patients whose gut barrier, immune system and normal gut microbiota are compromised, C. albicans often transmigrates the gut barrier, transforms into an invasive pathogen and causes fatal systemic infections. The genetic transitions that drive this transformation in C. albicans have been a major focus of research and have led to the identification of key transcription factors that regulate this commensal-to-pathogen transition. However, the current challenge lies in identifying the downstream pathways and effectors that bring this transition into effect. This thesis addressed this challenge by developing 11 new bioinformatics tools, including 6 comprehensive databases, 4 novel software packages and 1 analysis framework. These databases included a comprehensive topological map of the mammalian gut biogeography, a C. albicans microarray database comprising of 3,091 publically available microarray transcript profiles, C. albicans RNA-seq gene expression and small variant databases extracted from 1,177 publically available RNA-seq samples, a C. albicans gene alias database comprising of 113,297 gene aliases representing the 6,735 open reading frames of C. albicans, and a C. albicans gene ontology slim comprising of 1,194 C. albicans-specific gene ontology terms. These databases were accompanied by a robust analysis framework which brought together these resources for quality control, batch correction and weighted gene co-expression network analysis. All these tools were finally employed in a pilot exploration of the C. albicans gut commensal-to-pathogen transition, which demonstrated the effectiveness of these bioinformatics resources. The analysis unveiled known regulators, uncharacterized gene networks, pathways and effectors potentially crucial for the C. albicans gut commensal-topathogen transition. These resources are a step towards a better understanding of this transition and can also be utilized for examining various other aspects of C. albicans biology.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:767356 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Sood, Prashant |
| Contributors | Brown, Alistair J. P. ; Brown, Gordon Douglas ; MacCallum, Donna M. |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=240695 |
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