Phenotypic analysis of genes whose mRNA accumulation is dependent on calcineurin in Aspergillus fumigatus

Calcineurin plays an important role in the control of cell morphology and virulence in fungi. Calcineurin is a serine/threonine-specific protein phosphatase heterodimer consisting of a catalytic subunit A and a regulatory subunit B. A mutant of Aspergillus fumigatus lacking the calcineurin A (calA) catalytic subunit exhibited defective hyphal morphology related to apical extension and branching growth, which resulted in drastically decreased filamentation. Here, we investigated which pathways are influenced by A. fumigatus calcineurin during proliferation by comparatively determining the transcriptional profile of A. fumigatus wild type and ΔcalA mutant strains. Our results showed that the mitochondrial copy number is reduced in the ΔcalA mutant strain, and the mutant has increased alternative oxidase (aoxA) mRNA accumulation and activity. Furthermore, we identified four genes that encode transcription factors that have increased mRNA expression in the ΔcalA mutant. Deletion mutants for these transcription factors had reduced susceptibility to itraconazole, caspofungin, and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS).