Oxford University Press, FEMS Microbiology Letters, 1(363), p. fnv212, 2015
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Candida albicans is the most frequent agent of human disseminated fungal infection. Ectophosphatase and ectonucleotidase activities are known as influencing the infectious potential of several microbes, including other non-albicans Candida species. With the present work we aim to characterize this 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 of secreted soluble enzymes and changed when the yeast cells are under infection conditions, including low pH, higher temperature and CO2 content.