Since CSF is in steady contact with the brain tissue, this setting represents the best possible in vitro model for the conditions in the CNS. Elimination of complement proteins was used as a relevant parameter to quantify the action of the fungal proteases and to investigate elimination of complement as

effective evasion strategy. A putative correlation between the phylogenetic background and the degradation of complement proteins is of particular interest to find an explanation Kinase Inhibitor Library for the differences between the species concerning virulence and triggered clinical symptoms. For that reason several strains of P. boydii, P. apiosperma and S. dehoogii were studied for their ability to eliminate complement

proteins to acquire nutrients and to evade complement attack in the infected host. The isolates of P. apiosperma, P. boydii and S. dehoogii with their corresponding CBS number and their origin are listed in Table 1. The identity of all isolates was confirmed by ITS sequencing. For some experiments, a clinical isolate of Aspergillus fumigatus obtained from a hospitalised patient with cerebral aspergillosis was used; the patient suffered from acute myeloic leukaemia KPT 330 and neutropenia as underlying disease. Long-term storage of all conidia was executed at −80 °C in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) supplemented with 20% glycerol. Experiments with fungal growth in CSF were performed with freshly harvested conidia: fungi were grown for at least 5 days on Sabouraud (BD Diagnostic Systems, Franklin Lakes, NJ, USA) agar plates at 28 °C until sporulation was clearly visible; conidia were swept off from sporulating colonies with PBS containing 0.05% Tween-20 (Sigma, St. Louis, MO, USA) and kept at 4 °C. Pure cultures of the fungal isolates were

grown on oatmeal agar or malt extract agar. The extraction of DNA was performed as described previously.5 Briefly, mycelia were disrupted mechanically and the DNA was purified from the homogenate using chloroform and precipitation with ice-cold ethanol. After centrifugation, the pelleted DNA was resolved in TE buffer followed by treatment with RNase. The PCR for ITS-amplification was performed using the primer pair V9G and LS266, whereas the primers ITS4 and ITS5 were Farnesyltransferase used for sequencing.11 Alignments were done with the help of muscle software;24 maximum parsimony was calculated by means of mega 4.0.25 Deposition of complement proteins on the surface of fungal hyphae was analysed using either human serum or CSF as complement source. For that purpose, human serum was obtained from 5 to 6 healthy individuals, pooled and stored frozen at −80 °C for further use. Cerebrospinal fluid pools were obtained from 15 individuals who were investigated for neurological non-inflammatory diseases and also stored at −80 °C. The CSF samples with traces of bleeding or elevated albumin levels were excluded.