GENETIC ORGANIZATION AND SEQUENCE-ANALYSIS OF THE HYPHA-SPECIFIC CELL-WALL PROTEIN GENE HWPL OF CANDIDA-ALBICANS

A previously isolated partial cDNA encoding a cell wall protein antige n found on hyphal surfaces of the opportunistic fungal pathogen, Candi da albicans (Staab et al., 1996) was used to clone the complete hyphal wall protein 1 gene (HWP1). Hyphal forms of C. albicans invade mucosa l surfaces of immunocompromised patients such as those with AIDS. HWP1 consisted of an open reading frame predicting an acidic protein (pI o f 3.37) with a calculated molecular size of 61,122. The antigenic doma in was located in the N-terminal third of the protein. The remainder o f the protein contained abundant hydroxy amino acids, and terminated w ith a string of 15 amino acids typical of sequences specifying post-tr anslational modification with glycosylphosphatidylinositol (6PI). The analyses suggested that Hwp1 is a glucan-linked protein with serine/th reonine-rich regions that are predicted to function in extending a lig and-binding domain into the extracellular space. The nucleotide sequen ce reported in this paper has been submitted to GenBank/EMBL databank with Accession Number U64206. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.