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Exploring the interplay of fungi and bacteria in vaginal microbiota

Romero García, Fabricio (2021) MOBM02 20211
Degree Projects in Molecular Biology
Popular Abstract
What does Candida have in common with vaginal microbiota?

We share our body with millions of microbes, which share a common space and interact tightly. All the interactions between them are important for keeping a good microenvironment. However, there is always a disruption of what should be otherwise a comfortable place to live. Such changes can be subtle or can affect entire communities of microbes. These are opportunities for any given microbe, like Candida that otherwise is benign, to colonise wider regions and lead to disease.

Vulvovaginal candidiasis is a quite common disease in women, that most of them have had or will have an episode at least once in their life. However, the cause of the progression to the disease has not... (More)
What does Candida have in common with vaginal microbiota?

We share our body with millions of microbes, which share a common space and interact tightly. All the interactions between them are important for keeping a good microenvironment. However, there is always a disruption of what should be otherwise a comfortable place to live. Such changes can be subtle or can affect entire communities of microbes. These are opportunities for any given microbe, like Candida that otherwise is benign, to colonise wider regions and lead to disease.

Vulvovaginal candidiasis is a quite common disease in women, that most of them have had or will have an episode at least once in their life. However, the cause of the progression to the disease has not been well defined. It does not depend on the sole presence of Candida, since it is present in a high percentage of human healthy hosts as commensal, 4% in our work. There are important interactions between Candida and the rest of members of the vaginal microbiota, either with health-related members of the microbiota, like Lactobacillus, but also with disease-related microbes, like Gardnerella.

In our work, we co-culture the most prevalent Candida species living in human hosts, with some of most well-known disease-related species, like Atopobium, but also with other less known species, like Peptoniphilus. We also like to know how Lactobacillus iners behaves, which is known to have an ambiguous role in the vaginal microenvironment. With them, we explore two basic mechanisms known to be important triggers for colonisation and eventually progression of disease when found in human hosts: co-aggregation and biofilm formation.

What are the highlights of what we found?
Most of the diseased-related microbes are characterised as anaerobic. We instead, wanted to know the effects of an atmoshpere low in oxygen, which might be more similar to the vaginal environment. Under this conditions, we found out that all the microbes we are testing thrive and behave in a different way compared to anaerobic conditions. Gardnerella and L. iners form consistently bigger co-aggregates when interacting with all the other microbes and with themselves. Additionally, Candida albicans and Gardnerella form in all the interactions, more viable biofilms with all the microbes tested than Candida glabrata, which in most cases, appears to partially disrupt the viability of the biofilm.

These findings confirm and reinforce what is known from Gardnerella as one of the main actors under disease. Interestingly, the different biofilm formation viability we found in the two Candida species, suggest that they might behave distinctly under colonisation or disease, as C. albicans appears to provide a quite suitable environment for other microbes. As always, it is important to be careful when translating our findings to other models as living things behave distinctly under different conditions. But they might follow a similar pattern. Finally, answering the question at the beginning, Candida is a member of the vaginal microbiota.

Master’s Degree Project in Molecular Biology, 30 credits, 2021. Department of Biology, Lund University

Supervisor: Juan Du. Centre for Translational Microbiome Research (CTMR). Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology (MTC), Karolinska Institutet. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Romero García, Fabricio
supervisor
organization
course
MOBM02 20211
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
language
English
id
9064721
date added to LUP
2021-09-03 12:11:52
date last changed
2021-09-03 12:11:52
@misc{9064721,
  author       = {{Romero García, Fabricio}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Exploring the interplay of fungi and bacteria in vaginal microbiota}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}