ABSTRACT
Recent years have seen a dramatic rise in the incidence of fungal infections attributable to the increasingly frequent use of anti-bacterial antibiotics, cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agents, indwelling catheters, and other predisposing factors [1,2]. Fungal-mediated host cell damage is an important component of fungal virulence and is assumed to help in invasion of host tissues by disrupting host cell membranes, resulting in membrane dysfunction and eventual cell death [3,4]. Phospholipids and proteins represent the major chemical constituents of the host cell envelope. Therefore, enzymes such as phospholipases and proteinases capable of hydrolyzing these proteins are likely to be involved in the host cell-membrane disruption processes. Many fungal pathogens secrete such extracellular proteins which target the protein or lipid component of the host membranes. Thus, secretory proteins have figured prominently among the list of factors responsible for fungal virulence. These fungal secretory proteins have been categorized into two main groups: phospholipases, which hydrolyze phospholipids [5], and proteinases, which hydrolyze peptide bonds [6,7]. This chapter focuses on the contribution of these secretory proteins to fungal virulence.
