Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Feb 2;2015(2):168-71.
doi: 10.1101/pdb.prot085068.

The plate-washing assay: a simple test for filamentous growth in budding yeast

Paul J Cullen  1
Affiliations

The plate-washing assay: a simple test for filamentous growth in budding yeast

Paul J Cullen. Cold Spring Harb Protoc. .

Abstract

Filamentous growth is a foraging response that occurs in fungal species. It allows fungal pathogens to invade cells and tissues of a host organism. Budding yeast undergoes filamentous growth and can invade semisolid agar plates, penetrating the agar surface. These cells cannot be removed by rinsing with water and form an invasive scar. The plate-washing assay is an easy first test for filamentous growth and is performed at low cost with minimal reagents. The assay is versatile: It can be used as a teaching tool, is amenable to high-throughput genetic analysis, and is used to evaluate filamentous growth in different fungal species, including pathogens like Candida albicans.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Sample results from a plate-washing assay. Colonies of the Σ1278b background grown on YEPD have a ruffled appearance (top left). Washing the plate in a stream of water reveals an invasive scar (top right). A mutant lacking the FLO11 gene (flo11Δ) that is defective for filamentous growth has a smooth pattern (bottom left) and is defective for agar invasion (bottom right). Bar, 1 cm.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Gimeno CJ, Ljungdahl PO, Styles CA, Fink GR. Unipolar cell divisions in the yeast S. cerevisiae lead to filamentous growth: Regulation by starvation and RAS. Cell. 1992;68:1077–1090. - PubMed
    1. Granek JA, Magwene PM. Environmental and genetic determinants of colony morphology in yeast. PLoS Genet. 2010;6:e1000823. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Liu H, Styles CA, Fink GR. Saccharomyces cerevisiae S288C has a mutation in FLO8, a gene required for filamentous growth. Genetics. 1996;144:967–978. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ryan O, Shapiro RS, Kurat CF, Mayhew D, Baryshnikova A, Chin B, Lin ZY, Cox MJ, Vizeacoumar F, Cheung D, et al. Global gene deletion analysis exploring yeast filamentous growth. Science. 2012;337:1353–1356. - PubMed
    1. Schneider CA, Rasband WS, Eliceiri KW. NIH Image to ImageJ: 25 years of image analysis. Nat Methods. 2012;9:671–675. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources