Searching For Metallophores And Metal Reactive Metabolites in Candida albicans

All organisms including microbial pathogens require trace levels of metal micronutrients such as Fe and Cu for survival. During infection, the host attempts to starve microbes of these nutrients, and microbes can adapt by producing metallophores, small metal-binding molecules that capture extracellular metals for microbial uptake. The prevalent human fungal pathogen Candida albicans faces Fe and Cu starvation in the host, but the involvement of metallophore production in C. albicans was unknown. Thus, the purpose of this project was to investigate whether C. albicans secretes metallophores or other metal reactive compounds during metal starvation. We inspected the extracellular growth medium for small metal-reactive compounds, using size exclusion chromatography (SEC) to separate