Glucose starvation promotes efficient polarized cell growth and induces the expression of mating-related genes in <i>MTL</i>a/a cells of <i>C</i>. <i>albicans</i>.

(A) Morphologies of the laboratory strain GH1013 (MTLa/a) grown on YPD-K and YP-K media. 1 × 105 cells were spotted on YPD-K and YP-K media and cultured at 25°C for five days. Scale bar for colonies (left panels), 2 mm; scale bar for cells (right panels), 10 μm. (B) Morphologies of three clinical C. albicans strains (MTLa/a) grown on YP-K medium at 30°C for four days. Scale bar for colonies (inset), 2 mm; scale bar for cells, 10 μm. (C) Relative expression levels of mating-related genes normalized to ACT1. Cells of GH1013 were used, and culture conditions were same as described in panel (A). Error bars represent standard errors of technical duplicates. *p t test. Experiment was repeated in a biological replicate, and a representative image is shown. The numerical data are presented in S3 Data. ACT1, ACTin 1; Bar1, BARrier 1; FIG1, Factor-Induced Gene 1; FUS1, cell FUSion 1; MFA1, Mating type A1; MFα, Mating α factor precursor; MTL, Mating type locus; p, mating projection; STE2, STErile 2; YPD-K, yeast extract-peptone-glucose-K2HPO4; YP-K, yeast extract-peptone-K2HPO4.