EC Accepts, published online ahead of print on 1 May 2009

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Eukaryotic Cell doi:10.1128/EC.00326-08
Copyright (c) 2009, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Class III chitin synthase, ChsB, of Aspergillus nidulans localizes at the sites of polarized cell wall synthesis and is required for conidia development

Kazuharu Fukuda, Kazunari Yamada, Ken Deoka, Shuichi Yamashita, Akinori Ohta, and Hiroyuki Horiuchi^*

Department of Biotechnology and Department of Agricultural and Environmental Biology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8657, Japan

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: ahhoriu{at}mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp.

Class III chitin synthases play important roles in tip growth and conidiation in many filamentous fungi. However, little is known about their functions in those processes. To address these issues, we characterized the deletion mutant of a class III chitin synthase-encoding gene of Aspergillus nidulans, chsB, and investigated ChsB localization in the hyphae and conidiophores. Multi-layered cell walls and intrahyphal hyphae were observed in the hyphae of the chsB deletion mutant, and wavy septa were also occasionally observed. ChsB tagged with FLAG or EGFP localized mainly at the tips of germ tubes, hyphal tips and forming septa during hyphal growth. EGFP-ChsB predominantly localized at polarized growth sites and between vesicles and metulae, metulae and phialides, and phalides and conidia in asexual development. These results strongly suggest that ChsB functions in the formation of normal cell walls of hyphae as well as in conidiophore and conidia development in A. nidulans.