The genomics of Aspergillus fumigatus.

In 1999, a proposal was put forward for a pilot project to sequence a region of the medically important pathogenic fungus Aspergillus fumigatus to determine whether a whole genome sequencing project was viable. This thesis reports on the generation of a Bacterial Artificial Chromosome library and the sequencing and annotation of a 1Mb region surrounding the niaD gene cluster. Identification of the BAC containing the niaD gene was achieved through hybridisation and the clones "walked" out from this. The final minimal tiling path contig used for sequencing consisted of 16 overlapping clones. The total sequence completed was 921,539bp which, after annotation, was shown to contain 341 predicted putative protein coding genes and 8 tRNA genes with a GC content of 50.6%. Of significance was the synteny found in the qut/qa gene cluster between A. fumigatus and A. nidulans. There was complete conservation of this cluster between the two, except for the inversion of two regions, facC and trpC. An aroM gene was also found, which has a known involvement in aromatic compound synthesis and could be a good candidate for possible drug targets.