Chitinases Are Essential for Sexual Development but Not Vegetative Growth in Cryptococcus neoformans

Cryptococcus neoformans is an opportunistic pathogen that mainly infects immunocompromised individuals. The fungal cell wall of C. neoformans is an excellent target for antifungal therapies since it is an essential organelle that provides cell structure and integrity. Importantly, it is needed for localization or attachment of known virulence factors, including melanin, phospholipase, and the polysaccharide capsule. The polysaccharide fraction of the cryptococcal cell wall is a complex structure composed of chitin, chitosan, and glucans. Chitin is an indispensable component of many fungal cell walls that contributes significantly to cell wall strength and integrity. Fungal cell walls are very dynamic, constantly changing during cell division and morphogenesis. Hydrolytic enzymes, such as chitinases, have been implicated in the maintenance of cell wall plasticity and separation of the mother and daughter cells at the bud neck during vegetative growth in yeast. In C. neoformans we identified four predicted endochitinases, CHI2, CHI21, CHI22, and CHI4, and a predicted exochitinase, hexosaminidase, HEX1. Enzymatic analysis indicated that Chi2, Chi22, and Hex1 actively degraded chitinoligomeric substrates. Chi2 and Hex1 activity was associated mostly with the cellular fraction, and Chi22 activity was more prominent in the supernatant. The enzymatic activity of Hex1 increased when grown in media containing only N-acetylglucosamine as a carbon source, suggesting that its activity may be inducible by chitin degradation products. Using a quadruple endochitinase deletion strain, we determined that the endochitinases do not affect the growth or morphology of C. neoformans during asexual reproduction. However, mating assays indicated that Chi2, Chi21, and Chi4 are each involved in sexual reproduction. In summary, the endochitinases were found to be dispensable for routine vegetative growth but not sexual reproduction.Cryptococcus neoformans is an opportunistic fungal pathogen that causes cryptococcosis in immunocompromised individuals. The incidence of cryptococcosis continues to rise in direct proportion to the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (for review, see Casadevall and Perfect [7]). It is estimated that up to 13% of AIDS patients in the United States will develop life-threatening cryptococcal meningitis, and in some parts of Africa this estimate increases to 40% (7). Current antifungal therapies for treatment of cryptococcosis are inadequate. Amphotericin B, which is believed to interact with membrane sterols (ergosterol) to produce an aggregate that forms a transmembrane channel is effective, but toxic (50, 62). Fluconazole inhibits cytochrome P-450-dependent 14α-sterol demethylase, which leads to the depletion of ergosterol and the accumulation of sterol precursors and results in the formation of a plasma membrane with altered structure and function. It is fungistatic and has high relapse rates (18, 41, 42, 50, 62). Flucytosine can be toxic and resistance occurs frequently (9, 41, 42, 50, 62). The newest class of antifungals to emerge is the echinocandins that targets an essential fungal enzyme required for the synthesis of a β-(1,3)-glucan in the fungal cell wall (17, 34). In addition, the echinocandins have been shown to be safe and effective for treatment of specific fungal infections, including candidiasis and aspergillosis caused by Candida albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus, respectively (23, 59). However, even though C. neoformans possesses the target enzyme β-(1,3)-glucan synthase and in vitro assays have shown the enzyme''s activity to be inhibited by the echinocandin caspofungin (34), C. neoformans still exhibits resistance to this class of drugs (26).Because fungi are eukaryotes and share many biochemical processes with their host, antifungal drug design has been problematic. The cell wall is a prominent structure that differentiates fungi from mammalian host cells. For all fungi, this organelle is essential and provides structure as well as integrity; thus, the cell wall components or their biosynthetic pathways make attractive drug targets. In addition, the cell wall of C. neoformans is associated with a variety of known virulence factors that are important for host-pathogen interactions, and it contains polymers including chitin and chitosan that are necessary for the viability of C. neoformans. The first virulence factor that a host cell encounters is the polysaccharide capsule. The capsule attachment to the outer portion of the cell wall requires α-(1-3)-glucan (15, 46). Another cell wall associated virulence factor is the melanin pigment (61) that is produced by two laccase proteins, Lac1 and Lac2 (38, 44). Lac1 is responsible for generating the majority of melanin and is localized to the cell wall (38, 63, 69). Chitin and chitosan are essential components of the cell wall that have been shown to contribute to the overall strength and integrity of the cell wall (4, 5). The essentiality of the chitin component and the lack of it being present in host cells make chitin and its biosynthetic components attractive targets for drug design.Chitin is one of the most abundant polymers found in nature (1, 12). It is a linear polymer of β-(1,4)-linked N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc), and in fungi it is formed from cytoplasmic pools of UDP-GlcNAc. C. neoformans has eight predicted chitin synthases and three putative chitin synthase regulators for synthesis of chitin polymers. Mutational analysis indicate that two chitin synthases, Chs4 and Chs5, produce the majority of vegetative chitin, and one, Chs3, produces the majority of chitin that is converted to chitosan during vegetative growth (5). Chitosan, the deacetylated version of chitin, is produced by chitin deacetylases (EC 3.5.1.41) that remove acetyl groups from nascent chitin polymers. In C. neoformans the chitin produced by Chs3 and the chitin synthase regulator, Csr2, is deacetylated to chitosan by up to three chitin deacetylases (Cda1, Cda2, and Cda3) (4, 5). Strains of C. neoformans lacking either CHS3 or CSR2 have significantly reduced chitosan levels and are sensitive to a variety of cell wall inhibitors (5). Similarly, strains lacking all three chitin deacetylases are unable to convert chitin to chitosan and are sensitive to cell wall inhibitors (4). This indicates that chitosan is essential for the proper maintenance of cell wall integrity in C. neoformans and Chs3, Csr2, and the chitin deacetylases contribute to its formation (4, 5). Chitosan polymers of other fungi have been reported to possess various degrees of deacetylation (57). Chitin and chitosan are located throughout the lateral cell wall and bud neck regions of C. neoformans (4). During growth cellular chitin and chitosan need to be continuously remodeled, presumably through the enzymatic digestion of chitin and chitosan polymers by chitinases and or chitosanases.Chitinases (EC 3.2.1.14) are enzymes that hydrolyze the β-(1-4) linkages in polymers of chitin. Besides being in fungi, these enzymes occur in a wide variety of organisms, including viruses, bacteria, plants, and animals (1, 12). There are two major categories of chitinases: endochitinases and exochitinases. Generally, the endochitinases cleave chitin chains internally to generate low-molecular-mass multimers of GlcNAc. In contrast, the exochitinases are divided into two subcategories: chitobiosidases (EC 3.2.1.29) release diacetylchitobiose from the nonreducing end of chitin chains, and β-(1,4)-N-acetylhexosaminidases (EC 3.2.1.52) release GlcNAc from the nonreducing end of chitin oligosaccharides; both types are usually processive (12). Fungal chitosanases (EC 3.2.1.132) are less understood. They have been found in Aspergillus spp. and Gongronella sp. strain JG. Although these chitosanases have been shown to degrade chitosan, their in vitro physiological relevance has not been elucidated (8, 60).In other fungal systems chitinases are known to be involved in cell separation, hyphal growth and branching, development of reproductive structures, spore germination, and autolysis (1, 12). In the nonpathogenic model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae two chitinases, Cts1p and Cts2p, function independently in bud separation and spore formation, respectively (25, 27). Cts1p is the only chitinase expressed during vegetative growth, and strains lacking this enzyme display incomplete cell separation (27) that can lead to pseudohyphalike growth (25). The synthesis of the spore wall is adversely affected by the deletion of CTS2 and affects the ability of the yeast to form mature asci (19).C. neoformans reproduces predominantly by budding, but also has a defined sexual cycle that culminates in the production of basidiospores. Both the yeast and the spore forms are thought to be infectious particles (7). C. neoformans typically colonizes the lungs of a immunocompromised host, from where it can disseminate to the central nervous system (7). As such, reproduction by budding has been shown to occur within host macrophages and dendritic cells (3, 28). Because fungal chitinases in other systems such as S. cerevisiae and C. albicans have been shown to be necessary for the completion of cell division (11, 27), understanding the biosynthesis and activity of chitinases could determine whether interfering with chitinase activity would impair the ability of C. neoformans to reproduce.We hypothesized that the chitinases in C. neoformans would be involved in growth and, like the chitinases in S. cerevisiae and C. albicans, that they would degrade specific chitin during either bud separation, hyphal growth, or sporulation. In the present study we utilized a homology-based search to identify five potential chitinases in C. neoformans, the four endochitinases CHI2, CHI21, CHI22, and CHI4 and one exochitinase, HEX1. Using a panel of chitinase deletion strains we discovered that the chitinases are dispensable for “normal” vegetative growth but were necessary during development of the sexual phase of C. neoformans.