The mould Aspergillus fumigatus is the most common airborne fungal pathogen of humans causing allergic reactions and severe invasive diseases, termed aspergillosis, in immunocompromised patients. The unsatisfying therapy and diagnosis of aspergillosis, demands a search for new antifungal drugs and fungal specific biomarkers.
My PhD thesis has two goals: The first goal is the analysis of the potential of siderophores (low-molecular mass iron chelators) as specific biomarkers for Aspergillus infections as secretion of extracellular siderophores has previously been shown to be crucial for iron acquisition and virulence of A. fumigatus.
The second goal is the analysis of the role of leucine biosynthesis in the virulence and as antifungal drug target of A. fumigatus as leucine is an essential amino acid for mammalians, which consequently lack the biosynthetic pathway. In a first step, we generated A. fumigatus mutant strains lacking the leucine biosynthetic enzymes LeuA or LeuC and demonstrated their essential function in leucine biosynthesis. In the next step, these mutants will be employed to analyze the role of leucine biosynthesis in pathogenicity of A. fumigatus in wax moth and murine virulence models.
