Genome Diversity and Evolution in the Budding Yeasts (Saccharomycotina).

Considerable progress in our understanding of yeast genomes and their evolution has been made over the last decade with the sequencing, analysis, and comparisons of numerous species, strains, or isolates of diverse origins. The role played by yeasts in natural environments as well as in artificial manufactures, combined with the importance of some species as model experimental systems sustained this effort. At the same time, their enormous evolutionary diversity (there are yeast species in every subphylum of Dikarya) sparked curiosity but necessitated further efforts to obtain appropriate reference genomes. Today, yeast genomes have been very informative about basic mechanisms of evolution, speciation, hybridization, domestication, as well as about the molecular machineries underlying them. They are also irreplaceable to investigate in detail the complex relationship between genotypes and phenotypes with both theoretical and practical implications. This review examines these questions at two distinct levels offered by the broad evolutionary range of yeasts: inside the best-studied Saccharomyces species complex, and across the entire and diversified subphylum of Saccharomycotina. While obviously revealing evolutionary histories at different scales, data converge to a remarkably coherent picture in which one can estimate the relative importance of intrinsic genome dynamics, including gene birth and loss, vs. horizontal genetic accidents in the making of populations. The facility with which novel yeast genomes can now be studied, combined with the already numerous available reference genomes, offer privileged perspectives to further examine these fundamental biological questions using yeasts both as eukaryotic models and as fungi of practical importance.

Proteomic changes associated with inactivation of the Candida glabrata ACE2 virulence-moderating gene.

Inactivation of the gene encoding the transcriptional activator Ace2 in the fungal pathogen Candida glabrata results in an almost 200-fold increase in virulence characterised by acute mortality and a massive over-stimulation of the pro-inflammatory arm of the innate immune system. In this study we have adopted a proteomics approach to identify cellular functions regulated by C. glabrata Ace2 that might contribute to this increase in virulence. A two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis map of the C. glabrata proteome was constructed. We identified a total of 123 proteins, 61 of which displayed reproducible and statistically significant alterations in their levels following inactivation of ACE2. Of these, the levels of 32 proteins were elevated, and 29 were reduced in ace2 cells. These data show that Ace2 influences metabolism, protein synthesis, folding and targeting, and aspects of cell growth and polarisation. Some of these functions are likely to contribute to the effects of Ace2 upon the virulence of C. glabrata.