Characterization of extracellular nucleotide metabolism in Candida albicans

Candida albicans is the most frequent agent of human disseminated fungal infection. Ectophosphatase and ectonucleotidase activities are known to influence the infectious potential of several microbes, including other non-albicans species of Candida. With the present work we aim to characterize these ecto-enzymatic activities in C. albicans. We found that C. albicans does not have a classical ecto-5'-nucleotidase enzyme and 5'AMP is cleaved by a phosphatase instead of exclusively by a nucleotidase that also can use 3'AMP as a substrate. Moreover, these enzymatic activities are not dependent on secreted soluble enzymes and change when the yeast cells are under infection conditions, including low pH, and higher temperature and CO2 content.