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Infection and Immunity, July 2008, p. 3214-3220, Vol. 76, No. 7
0019-9567/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/IAI.00009-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Defects in Conidiophore Development and Conidium-Macrophage Interactions in a Dioxygenase Mutant of Aspergillus fumigatus ^,

Taylor R. T. Dagenais,^1, DaWoon Chung,^2,, Steven S. Giles,³ Christina M. Hull,³ David Andes,⁴ and Nancy P. Keller^1,2*

Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin,¹ Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin,² Department of Biomolecular Chemistry, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin,³ Department of Medicine, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, Wisconsin⁴

Received 3 January 2008/ Returned for modification 10 February 2008/ Accepted 19 April 2008

Oxygenated fatty acids, or oxylipins, play an essential role in physiological signaling and developmental processes in animals, plants, and fungi. Previous characterization of three Aspergillus fumigatus dioxygenases (PpoA, PpoB, and PpoC), similar in sequence to mammalian cyclooxygenases, showed that PpoA is responsible for the production of the oxylipins 8R-hydroperoxyoctadecadienoic acid and 5S,8R-dihydroxy-9Z,12Z-octadecadienoic acid and that PpoC is responsible for 10R-hydroxy-8E,12Z-hydroperoxyoctadecadienoic acid. Here, ppo mutants were characterized to elucidate the role of fungal dioxygenases in A. fumigatus development and host interactions. The ppoC strain displayed distinct phenotypes compared to those of other ppo mutants and the wild type, including altered conidium size, germination, and tolerance to oxidative stress as well as increased uptake and killing by primary alveolar macrophages. These experiments implicate oxylipins in pathogen development and suggest that ppoC represents a useful model for studying the A. fumigatus-host interaction.

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* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, WI 53706. Phone: (608) 262-9795. Fax: (608) 263-2626. E-mail: npk{at}plantpath.wisc.edu

Published ahead of print on 28 April 2008.

Supplemental material for this article may be found at http://iai.asm.org/.

Editor: A. Casadevall

T.R.T.D. and D.C. contributed equally to this work.

Present address: Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, 2132 Texas A&M University, College Station, TX.

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Infection and Immunity, July 2008, p. 3214-3220, Vol. 76, No. 7
0019-9567/08/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/IAI.00009-08
Copyright © 2008, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

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