Candidalysins Are a New Family of Cytolytic Fungal Peptide Toxins

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

species other than C. albicans. In this work, we identify and characterize two additional candidalysin toxins present in the related fungal pathogens C. dubliniensis and C. tropicalis. While the three candidalysins have different amino acid sequences, all three toxins are α-helical and amphipathic. Notably, the candidalysins from C. dubliniensis and C. tropicalis are more potent at inducing cell damage, calcium influx, mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling, and cytokine responses than C. albicans candidalysin, with the C. dubliniensis candidalysin having the most rapid membrane binding kinetics. These observations identify the candidalysins as the first family of peptide toxins in human-pathogenic fungi.