Abstract
Aspergillus fumigatus is a ubiquitous fungus that is a frequent opportunistic pathogen in immunosuppressed patients. Because of its role as a pathogen, it is of considerable experimental interest. A set of auxotrophic isogenic strains in the A. fumigatus genome reference strain AF293 has been developed. Using molecular genetic methods, arginine and lysine auxotrophs were made by deletion of argB and lysB, respectively. Transformation of these auxotrophic strains with plasmids carrying argB or lysB, respectively, results in efficient integration at these loci. Finally, these strains are able to form stable diploids, which should further facilitate analysis of gene functions in this fungus. Furthermore, the development of this isogenic set of auxotrophic strains in the AF293 background will enable investigators to study this important opportunistic human pathogen with greater facility.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health AI051144, AI052236 and N01-AI-30041 (GSM) and Cancer Center Support Grant CA16672 for the DNA sequencing core facility. We also want to acknowledge that preliminary sequence data were obtained from The Institute for Genomic Research website at http://www.tigr.org.
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Xue, T., Nguyen, C.K., Romans, A. et al. Isogenic auxotrophic mutant strains in the Aspergillus fumigatus genome reference strain AF293. Arch Microbiol 182, 346–353 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-004-0707-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-004-0707-z