Surviving oxidative stress under iron starvation: an important lesson eminently learned by Aspergillus fumigatus in the human body

ABSTRACT: Aspergillus fumigatus has to cope with a combination of several stress types after colonisng the human body, and the interplay between the different stress responses can significantly influence the survival of this human pathogen during the invasion of the host organism. In this study, we examined how the H2O2 induced oxidative stress response depends on iron availability. Surprisingly, the applied H2O2 treatment, which induced only a negligible stress response in iron fed cultures, deleteriously affected the fungus under iron starvation and the majority of stress responses on the transcript level were characteristic only for the combined H2O2-iron starvation stress treatments. Our data suggest that the survival of the fungus highly depends on fragile balances, e.g. between siderophore and ergosterol productions or between economization on iron and production of essential iron containing proteins. The applied stress conditions also affected several processes related to virulence or drug susceptibility including secondary metabolism, zinc acquisition or antifungal drug transport. Our[It would be interesting to mention the antioxidative enzymes which are upregulated/increase in abundance under iron-depleting conditions] data clearly demonstrate that studying stress responses under single stress treatments is not sufficient to understand how fungal pathogens survive in a complex habitat and support the view that the evolutionary success of A. fumigatus as an opportunistic human pathogen is not the mere consequence of the productions of certain virulence factors. Importantly, this fungal pathogen is able to mount and coordinate high-complexity and outstandingly efficient responses to multiple and superpositioning stresses in various harsh habitats like the human body.

OTHER RELATED OMICS DATASETS IN: PRJNA374516

INSTRUMENT(S): Q Exactive

ORGANISM(S): Aspergillus Fumigatus Af293

TISSUE(S): Hyphal Cell

SUBMITTER: Thomas Krüger  

LAB HEAD: Olaf Kniemeyer

PROVIDER: PXD006250 | Pride | 2018-05-16

REPOSITORIES: Pride