All primers and probes (see Additional file 1) were designed with Beacon Designer 2 (version 2.06) software (Premier Biosoft International, Palo Alto, CA, USA) and synthesized by MWG Biotech (Florence, Italy). qRT-PCRs were carried out as previously described [23]. The annealing temperature used for all primers

was 65°C. Each reaction was run in triplicate on three Kinase Inhibitor Library solubility dmso separate occasions. For relative quantification of target gene expression, ACT1 was used as a normalizer www.selleckchem.com/products/z-ietd-fmk.html gene [23]. Changes (n-fold) in gene expression relative to that of the control were determined from mean ACT1-normalized expression levels. Oxidative stress and cell wall inhibitor assays Susceptibilities to hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and cell wall inhibitors were measured with exponentially growing cells in liquid YEPD at 30°C or 37°C pre-treated or not with

FLC (10 mg/l) for 90 min as described elsewhere with modifications [26, 27]. The cells were next washed with sterile PBS and diluted to an OD650 of 1.0 in PBS. For the oxidative stress selleck inhibitor assays, aliquots of the cell suspensions were transferred to Eppendorf tubes where H2O2 (Sigma, Milan, Italy) was added to 20 mM and incubated at 30°C or 37°C for 2 h. Viability was determined after appropriate dilution of the samples with PBS by plating 100 μl in triplicate on solid YEPD. The CFU were counted after incubation for 72 h at 30°C or 37°C. For the cell wall inhibitor assays, dilutions Sinomenine of the cell suspensions were made in PBS and 5 μl of these were grown on YEPD plates containing 0.5% Congo red (Sigma, C-6767), 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 mg ml-1 calcofluor white (Sigma, F-3543), 0.01%, 0.03% and 0.06% SDS (Sigma) and 0.2, 0.5 and 1.0 mg ml-1 caffeine (Sigma, C-0750). Plates were incubated for 48 h at 30°C or 37°C and photographed. Results

and Discussion Experimental design and global gene expression results The transcript profiles of C. neoformans H99 cells exposed to 10 mg/l of FLC (1/2 × MIC) for one doubling time (90 min) at 30°C were compared with profiles of untreated cells. A total of 476 genes were found responsive to FLC treatment under the test conditions, consisting of a single concentration and a single time point as described elsewhere [28–30]. The threshold value used in the present analysis was at least a twofold difference of gene expression between the experimental conditions, which is a value generally accepted in fungal genome-wide expression profiling [31]. Given that approximately 95% of the genes (6434/6823) spotted on the microarrays gave validated data, the above mentioned number indicate that 7.4% of the total number of genes in the C. neoformans H99 genome exhibited transcriptional changes, with 231 genes being upregulated and 245 downregulated upon FLC treatment.