Long Terminal Repeat Retrotransposon Afut4 Promotes Azole Resistance of Aspergillus fumigatus by Enhancing the Expression of sac1 Gene

Abstract

Aspergillus fumigatus causes a series of invasive diseases, including the high-mortality invasive aspergillosis, and has been a serious global health threat because of its increased resistance to the first-line clinical triazoles. We analyzed the whole-genome sequence of 15 A. fumigatus strains from China and found that long terminal repeat retrotransposons (LTR-RTs), including Afut1 , Afut2, Afut3, and Afut4 , are most common and have the largest total nucleotide length among all transposable elements in A. fumigatus .