Gene essentiality in Aspergillus fumigatus

Products of essential genes of Aspergillus fumigatus are seen as potential targets for antifungal drugs, and both functional screens and bioinformatics approaches have been used to help identify such genes. The random screening approach makes use of the deletion of one copy of a gene in a diploid, and failure to recover the deletant during haploidization. In order to investigate the function of putative essential genes identified by both screening and bioinformatics approaches, the conditional promoter of the alcA gene of Aspergillus nidulans has been used. In some cases, the genes identified are not absolutely essential, but their deletion leads to slow growth. Such deletants can be recovered and cultivated for phenotypic characterization following transformation of haploid strains.