Systematic assessment of nutrient requirements for Aspergillus fumigatus growth on solid media

The research aimed to comprehensively understand how varying concentrations of nutrients affect A. fumigatus growth on solid media, providing insights into optimal conditions and crucial nutrient interactions. The methodology used in the present work enabled the prediction of growth rates across diverse conditions, suggesting that the regression model developed in this study can be enhanced in future investigations to establish a more resilient predictive framework

Paper will be added at later date once published, please find the Abstract below:

• Aspergillus fumigatus is a significant fungal pathogen responsible for severe infections, particularly in immunocompromised individuals. Despite the critical need for effective treatment strategies, increasing antifungal resistance presents a major challenge. Understanding the nutritional requirements and growth dynamics of A. fumigatus is essential for developing optimized culture conditions that could aid in both research and clinical diagnostics. This study employed a full factorial Design of Experiments (DoE) approach to systematically investigate the growth of A. fumigatus on solid media, focusing on the effects of varying concentrations of glucose, ammonium tartrate, and yeast extract. Optical density measurements were used to calculate growth rates, revealing that compositions with high glucose and high yeast extract yielded the highest growth rates, while ammonium tartrate was found to be non-essential. A regression model developed from the data identified yeast extract as the most significant factor influencing growth, with glucose exhibiting a quadratic effect. The study demonstrated that optimized culture conditions could be predicted and validated, offering a reliable method for maximizing A. fumigatus growth in laboratory settings. These findings provide valuable insights into fungal metabolism and offer potential for improving antifungal susceptibility testing and infection modelling.

Keywords: Aspergillus fumigatus, growth profile, DoE, optical density, solid media, yeast extract, ammonium tartrate, nutritional sources, growth rate.

• Software JMP required to use journal file. You can download a free trial.
• Data is within a journal, where you can click on button/ links to open data tables with saved scripts of steps taken for data analysis.

• The DoE Raw data MIB Tecan M200 pro is an excel file containing the raw data with separate sheets with calculation applied (Excel slope function only) prior to organising wells and matching to DoE patterns. JMP was used for all analysis