Considering the dramatic morphological phenotype of ΔAncnaA strain, it is possible that besides controlling calcineurin activity, AnRcnA is also involved in Aspergillus development. Involvement of calcipressins in development AR-13324 in vivo has been previously reported for the Drosophila melanogaster sarah mutants [46]. Eggs laid by sarah mutant females arrest in anaphase of meiosis I and fail to fully polyadenylate and translate bicoid mRNA. Furthermore, sarah mutant eggs show elevated cyclin B levels, indicating a failure to inactivate M-phase promoting factor (MPF). Taken together, these results demonstrate

that calcium selleck chemicals signaling is involved in Drosophila egg activation. It remains to be determined the further involvement of AnRcnA in A. nidulans development. During the writing of this paper, a complementary study reporting the construction of the ΔAfrcnA mutant in the A. fumigatus strain AF293 was published (named CbpA) [47]. These authors observed that deletion of the cbpA gene resulted in reduced hyphal growth and limited attenuated virulence. Different from our results, they also observed that the ΔcbpA strain showed increased calcium tolerance compared to the

wild-type strain. Some differences between ours and their results can be credited to A. fumigatus strain differences. However, it is interesting to emphasize the fact Selleck ATM Kinase Inhibitor that both Aspergilli showed some differences in the susceptibilities to manganese and EGTA (A. fumigatus) and cyclosporine A (A. nidulans). In contrast, those authors have shown that the A. fumigatus AF293 ΔcbpA and wild-type strains displayed an equal sensitivity to the oxidants menadione and hydrogen peroxide, Buspirone HCl and were also not able to demonstrate a direct protein-protein interaction between A. fumigatus CbpA and AfCnaA [47]. Conclusion

We have performed a transcriptional profiling analysis of the A. fumigatus ΔAfcrzA mutant strain exposed to calcium stress. This provided an excellent opportunity to identify genes and pathways that are under the influence of AfCrzA. We validated the relationship between AfCrzA and these selected genes by using deletion analysis and by checking through real-time RT-PCR the mRNA accumulation of these genes expressed either in the ΔAfcrzA or overexpression strains. AfRcnA, one of these selected genes, encodes a modulator of calcineurin activity. Recently, we demonstrated that contrary to previous findings, the gene encoding the A. nidulans calcineurin catalytic subunit homologue, AncnaA, is not essential and that the AncnaA deletion mutant shares the morphological phenotypes observed in the corresponding A. fumigatus mutant, ΔcalA [30]. Thus, we decided once more to exploit the conserved features of A. nidulans calcineurin system and concomitantly with A. fumigatus AfrcnA molecular analysis, we investigated the A. nidulans AnRcnA homologue.