[Identification of the target site of antimicrobial peptide AMP-17 against ].

is one of the major causes of invasive fungal infections and a serious opportunistic pathogen in immunocompromised individuals. The antimicrobial peptide AMP-17 has prominent anti- activity, and proteomic analysis revealed significant differences in the expression of cell wall () and oxidative stress () genes upon the action of AMP-17 on . , suggesting that AMP-17 may exert anti-. effects by affecting the expression of and genes. To further investigate whether and genes were the targets of AMP-17, . and mutants were constructed using the clustered regulatory interspaced short palindromic repeats-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) system. Phenotypic observations revealed that deletion of two genes had no significant effect on . growth and biofilm formation, whereas gene deletion affected stress response and mycelium formation of . . Drug sensitivity assay showed that the MIC values of AMP-17 against and mutants increased from 8 μg/mL (for the wild type . SC5314) to 16 μg/mL, while the MIC values against : : revertants decreased to the level of the wild type SC5314. In addition, the ability of AMP-17 to inhibit biofilm formation of both deletion strains was significantly reduced compared to that of wild type SC5314, indicating that the susceptibility of the deletion mutants to AMP-17 was reduced in both the yeast state and during biofilm formation. These results suggest that and genes are likely two of the potential targets for AMP-17 to exert anti. effects, which may facilitate further exploration of the antibacterial mechanism of novel peptide antifungal drugs.