Identification of Aspergillus fumigatus multidrug transporter genes and their potential involvement in antifungal resistance

Aspergillus fumigatus can cause severe fatal invasive aspergillosis in immunocompromised patients but is also found in the environment. A. fumigatus infections can be treated with antifungals agents among which azole and echinocandins. Resistance to the class of azoles has been reported not only from patient samples but also from environmental samples. Azole resistance mechanisms involve for most isolates alterations at the site of the azole target (cyp51A); however, a substantial number of isolates can also exhibit non-cyp51A-mediated mechanisms.We aimed here to identify novel A. fumigatus genes involved in azole resistance. For this purpose, we designed a functional complementation system of A. fumigatus cDNAs expressed in a Saccharomyces cerevisiae isolate lacking the ATP Binding Cassette (ABC) transporter PDR5 and that was therefore more azole-susceptible than the parent wild type. Several genes were recovered including two distinct ABC transporters (atrF, atrI) and a Major Facilitator transporter (mdrA), from which atrI (Afu3g07300) and mdrA (Afu1g13800) were not yet described. atrI mediated resistance to itraconazole and voriconazole, while atrF only to voriconazole in S. cerevisiae Gene inactivation of each transporter in A. fumigatus indicated that the transporters were involved in the basal level of azole susceptibility. The expression of the transporters was addressed in clinical and environmental isolates with several azole resistance profiles. Our results show that atrI and mdrA tended to be expressed at higher levels than atrF in normal growth conditions. atrF was upregulated in 2/4 of azole-resistant environmental isolates and was the only gene with a significant association between transporter expression and azole resistance. In conclusion, this work showed the potential of complementation to identify functional transporters. The identified transporters were suggested to participate in azole resistance of A. fumigatus; however, this hypothesis will need further approaches to be verified.