Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology

The Korean Society for Microbiology and Biotechnology (한국미생물·생명공학회)
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Inference of Aspergillus fumigatus Pathways by Computational Genome Analysis: Tricarboxylic Acid Cycle (TCA) and Glyoxylate Shunt

  • Do, Jin-Hwan (Bioinformatics Group, School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester) ;
  • Anderson, Michael-J. (The School of Medicine, University of Manchester) ;
  • Denning, David-W. (The School of Medicine, University of Manchester) ;
  • Erich, Bornberg-Bauer (Bioinformatics Group, School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester)
  • Published : 2004.02.01
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Abstract

Aspergillus fumigatus is one of the most common fungi in the human environment, both in-doors and out-doors. It is the main causative agent of invasive aspergillosis, a life-threatening mycosis among immunocompromised patients. The genome has been sequenced by an international consortium, including the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (U.K.) and The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR, U.S.A.), and a ten times whole genome shotgun sequence assembly has been made publicly available. In this study, we identified tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle enzymes of A. fumigatus by comparative analysis with four other fungal species. The open reading frames showed high amino acid sequence similarity with the other fungal citric acid enzymes and well-conserved functional domains. All genes present in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Candida albicans, and Neurospora crassa were also found in A. fumigatus. In addition, we identified four A. fumigatus genes coding for enzymes in the glyoxylate shunt, which may be required for fungal virulence. The architecture of multi-gene encoded enzymes, such as isocitrate dehydrogenase, 2-ketoglutarate, succinyl-CoA synthetase, and succinate dehydrogenase was well conserved in A. fumigatus. Furthermore, our results show that genes of A. fumigatus can be detected reliably using GlimmerM.

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References

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