A YEAST responsible for thrush can reproduce homosexually – potentially explaining ways it develops resistance to treatment.
When Candida albicans cells reproduce by mating, they have two sex types, “a” and “alpha”. Richard Bennett of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and his colleagues mixed the two types and saw matings between same-sex cells, but only a few (Nature, ).
They saw many more when they boosted a pheromone secreted by “a” cells that draws same-sex cells together. They did this by disabling an enzyme in “a” cells that usually destroys the “same-sex” pheromone.
Now they want to find…
