Unfolded protein response

yeasts have rewired many regulatory networks, such that processes as diverse as ribosomal protein gene regulation, galactose metabolism and mating-type switching, which appear to be very similar at the physiological level, are regulated by different transcription factors that bind to different regulatory sequences. Despite its evolutionary distance to S. cerevisiae being relatively short, C albicans, like other members of the ‘CUG’ clade, has a genetic code with a non-standard codon — CUG encodes serine rather than the conventional leucine — obviating the direct use of many genetic markers from heterologous organisms such as S. cerevisiae. This obstacle has been overcome by the development of codon-optimized markers, fluorescent proteins and other epitope tags, which can be inserted into the genome by several approaches all ultimately involving homologybased recombination. These tools have led to many of the important advances in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms specifying mating, white-opaque switching, biofilm formation and other processes important for pathogenicity and virulence. There are clearly many more to come.