Characterization of a rare clinical isolate of A. spinulosporus following a central nervous system infection.

A rarely reported clinical specimen of Aspergillus spinulosporus was isolated from an immunocompetent 22-month-old boy who was suffering from central nervous system aspergillosis and meningitis. The patient had no comorbidity, organ transplantation, or other surgical operations that lead to invasive aspergillosis. A. spinulosporus is mostly a soil borne strain, and only three invasive aspergillosis cases involving this strain have been reported. We isolated this strain from cerebrospinal fluid, cultured it successfully on PDA medium, and named it BJCH M5. We performed a complete genomic and phenotypic analysis, evolutionary relationship, secondary metabolites analysis, identification of virulence factor, and pairwise synteny analysis. We sequenced the complete 31.6 MB genome of A. spinulosporus, including the eight chromosomes and mitochondria. 11,356 protein-coding genes were predicted. BJCHM 5 has a high sequence identity with ten virulent factors of Aspergillus fumigatus. It also encodes two unique BGCs (Biosynthetic gene clusters) which are involved in human infection. Pairwise synteny analysis demonstrated that this strain has chromosome arrangement differences from A. nidulans. In conclusion, we isolated a specimen of the rarely reported pathogen A. spinulosporus and performed a complete genome assembly and functional characteristic analysis.