Abstract 1781 Protein interactions involved in polarized growth and cell wall integrity in Aspergillus nidulans

The long-term goal of our research is to advance understanding of the mechanisms involved in hyphal growth and maintenance of cell walls in filamentous fungi. Previously, we identified a mutation in the gene that encodes an orthologue of protein kinase C in our model organism Aspergillus nidulans, which results in reduced cell wall integrity. We showed that wild type PkcA localizes to growing hyphal apices and the contractile actomyosin ring at forming septa, and we identified amino acid sequences within PkcA that are required for PkcA to localize to these sites of cell wall synthesis.