Genetics and genomics of enteroarthroconidial development in Coccidioides
The human fungal pathogen Coccidioides causes disease when its infectious spores, enteroarthroconidia, are inhaled from the soil. Spore dispersal depends on the death of a unique developmental form, disjunctor cells, which flank incipient enteroarthroconidia and are unexplored molecularly. Here we used single-cell (sc) RNA-seq to catalog expression across the Coccidioides colony; with gene deletion and protein tagging, we established a role for the pyropoptosis-like cell death pathway in enteroarthroconidial development.
Authors
- Edyta Szewczyk (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2054-5855)
- Rachel B. Brem (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8587-9434)
- Christina M. Homer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4835-090X)
- Kaylee E. Christensen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-0058-4319)
- Kristopher E. Fleming (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0575-0829)
Institutions
- University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (US)
- Oregon Health & Science University (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
- Published
- 2026-10-28
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.10.27.762035
- Primary Topic
- Fungal Infections and Studies
- Type
- preprint
Funders
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- National Institutes of Health