A preliminary proteome analysis on the fluconazole-resistant strains of Penicillium marneffei

The correlated proteome of Penicillium marneffei resistant to fluconazole was investigated in the present study,in which 11 strains of P.marneffei of both the mycelial and yeast forms sensitive to fluconazole were cultivated in Sabouraud's liquid medium containing 8 g fluconazole and the MICs of fluoconazile to P.marneffei before and after inducing cultures were tested by E-test method.The strains of the mycelial and yeast forms showing the most significant increase in MIC value were selected and the protein clip CM10 was used to detect the proteome differences before and after inducing cultures.It was found that 11 strains of the mycelial forms and 2 strains of the yeast forms could tolerate the action of fluconazole and could grow at a drug concentration of 8 μg/mL.Furthermore,the MICs of fluoconazole to the mycelial forms were significantly increased after 7 days of inducing culture and the geometric means of MICs were increased from 1.22 μg /mL to 55.56 μg/mL.After the mycelial forms had been induced to be resistant,16 proteins were highly expressed with specific expression of the 4581.1 Da and 6109.7 Da proteins;whereas 22 resistant yeast form were highly expressed with specific expression of the 3575.2 Da,8507.0 Da and 8563.3 Da proteins.These results suggest that the mycelial form of P.narneffei seems to be more tolerant to the action of fluconazole than the yeast form.The resistance of these organisms to fluconazole may be associated to some specific proteins.