Full text
| |
| Author(s): |
Patrícia Alves de Castro
Total Authors: 1
|
| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | Ribeirão Preto. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto (PCARP/BC) |
| Defense date: | 2012-05-31 |
| Examining board members: |
Gustavo Henrique Goldman;
Tie Koide
|
| Advisor: | Gustavo Henrique Goldman |
| Abstract | |
Propolis is a complex mixture of several resinous substances which are collected thorn plants by bees. Propolis has attracted the attention of researchers because of its variety of biological and therapeutic properties. Studies have shown the connection between Propolis and apoptosis-like cell death in fungi and other important biological processes such as development, aging, stress response and pathogenesis. In this context, this project evaluated the antifungal activity of Propolis, With the aim of expanding the knowledge about the metabolic pathways of cell death in fungi such as S. cerevisiae and C. albicans, and also in relation to the use of propolis as an effective antifungal therapy. For this, initially we utilised S. cerevisiae as a model organism to study the genetics, cell biology and genomics that determine how propolis affects fungi at the cellular level. Propolis is able to induce an apoptosis cell death response. However, increased exposure to propolis provides a corresponding increase in the necrosis response. We showed that cytochrome c, but not endonuclease G (Nuc1p), is involved in propolis-mediated cell death in S. cerevisiae. We also observed that the metacaspase YCA1 gene is important for propolis-mediated cell death. To elucidate the gene functions that may be required Or propolis sensitivity in eukaryotes, the full collection of approximately 4,800 haploid S. cerevisiae deletion strains was screened for propolis sensitivity. We were able to identify 138 deletion strains that have different degrees of propolis sensitivity compared to the corresponding wild-type strains. Systems biology revealed enrichment for genes involved in the mitochondrial electron transport chain, vacuolar acidification, negative regulation of transcription from RNA polymerase II promoter, regulation of macroautophagy associated with protein targeting to vacuoles, and cellular responses to starvation. Validation studies indicated that propolis sensitivity is dependent on mitochondrial function and. that vacuolar acidification and autophagy are important for S. cerevisiae cell death caused by propolis. For the pathogenic fungus C. albicans it was observed that propolis induces cell death like necrosis. It was also observed that the IPF4847 gene (homologous to the YCA1 metacaspase gene of S. cerevisiae) was also important for cell death mediated by propolis in C. albicans. Furthermore, aiming to clarify some of the functions of genes that could be involved in C. albicans sensitivity to propolis, 800 C. albicans deletion mutants were screened, and 51 showed greater sensitivity to propolis compared with the corresponding wild-type strains. Several genes found in our screening were involved in the dimorphic transition of C. albicans. Thus, an assay was performed in order to verify the role of propolis in the inhibition of the dimorphic switch. It was observed that propolis can inhibit the dimorphic transition and the growth of all its morphotypes (budding hyphal and pseudohyphal) in C. albicans. So, the use of propolis for clinical treatment of Candidiasis may have a wide application, principally by affecting an important mechanism for the pathogenicity of fungi (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 09/13030-0 - Identification of death mecanisms in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Candida albicans induced by propolis |
| Grantee: | Patrícia Alves de Castro Silva |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Master |