Identifying candidate Aspergillus pathogenicity factors by annotation frequency

摘要: Members of the genus Aspergillus display a variety lifestyles, ranging from saprobic to pathogenic on plants and/or animals. Increased genome sequencing economically important members permits effective use “-omics” comparisons between closely related species and strains identify candidate genes that may contribute phenotypes interest, especially relating pathogenicity. Protein-coding were predicted 216 genomes 12 species, frequencies various structural aspects (exon count length, intron GC content, codon usage) functional annotations (InterPro, Gene Ontology, Kyoto Encyclopedia Genes Genomes terms) compared. Using principal component analyses, three sets for each strain clustered by species. The clusters appeared separate pathogenicity along first dimensions, which accounted over 20% variance. More encoding pectinases secondary metabolite biosynthetic enzymes assigned phytopathogenic such as flavus. In contrast, fumigatus strains, are animals but not plants, relatively more terms phosphate transferases, carbohydrate amino-sugar metabolism. Analyses publicly available RNA-Seq data indicated one A. protein among 17 processing candidates, hexokinase, was up-regulated during co-culturing with human immune system cells. hexokinases other proteins interest be subject future manipulations further refine understanding factors.