Fungal pathogenicity and human health: the opportunistic pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus

Aspergillus fumigatus invades immunocompromised patients through the lung and can disseminate via the bloodstream. Our goal is to explore transcriptional networks, which enable A. fumigatus to survive and proliferate in the mammalian bloodstream. We focus on a family of regulators of the velvet gene family consisting of the four proteins veA, velB, velC, and vosA which had been discovered as developmental regulators of Aspergillus nidulans. These regulators interact with laeA, a regulator of secondary metabolism.