Keynote Talk: Dynamics & Complexity of Host-Pathogen Encounters in Fungal Infections

The clinical spectrum of diseases caused by Candida spp. ranges from mucocutaneous infections to systemic, life-threatening invasive diseases in immunocompromised patients. My laboratory is interested to decipher and deconvolute the complexity and the molecular mechanisms underlying fungal pathogenesis by identifying genes required for invasion of mammalian hosts as well as for immune evasion. We also aim to identify host signaling networks acting at the interface of host-pathogen encounters. To investigate host-pathogen cross talk during discrete infection stages, we performed time-resolved dual-species parallel RNA sequencing to illustrate the dynamics of transcriptome changes in both Candida albicans and mouse bone marrow-derived dendritic cells. The approach identified discrete infection stages such as adhesion, phagocytosis, hyphal formation, and phagosomal escape. Modeling of time-resolved datasets and validation identified several virulence genes in both Ca and immune cells. Strikingly, our data suggest that splicing as it occurs during host invasion may play a key role in immune evasion by Candida albicans. In my lecture, I shall present an overview of fungal pathogenesis und related human inflammatory diseases. Moreover, I shall discuss how we can better decipher the complexity of host invasion using dual systems biology approaches that addresses the dynamic interplay of host immunity with fungal pathogens through modeling of biological data.