Towards a Better Understanding of the Epidemiology and Control of Eumycetoma

Eumycetoma, a neglected tropical disease with considerable knowledge gaps. Eumycetoma has shown worldwide pattern of incidence, yet most of the patients are living in the tropics and subtropics and are mostly living in poor communities. Madurella mycetomatis, a fungus which is considered the first in the broad list of fungal pathogens, recently M. mycetomatis was exploited with modern biological techniques which hopefully ended with whole genome sequencing, development of PCR diagnostic tool, and revealing many aspects of the host-parasite interactions.
The aim of this PhD thesis were (i) advance the knowledge on aspects of eumycetoma epidemiology (ii) investigate potential drug targets and active compounds for prospect control and elimination (iii) conduct comparative genomics to answer the questions in (ii) and to search for specific virulence genes that could explain the human invasion by the causative agents.
The list of eumycetoma pathogens featured 130 fully identified species along with 13 partially identified pathogens (genus only), these agents have shown differences in their spatial distribution; some species were of limited distribution including Aspergillus fumigatus and Leptospheria senegalensis, while M. mycetomatis and Madurella grisea have shown worldwide distribution. Comparing the proteomes of eumycetoma fungi to those from famous phytopathogens revealed the potential of adenosine deaminase, chitin synthase, and succinate dehydrogenase to serve as future drug targets against eumycetoma fungal pathogens.
We have also identified myosine related proteins and other set of proteins to have remarkable conservation bias towards eumycetoma fungal pathogens compared to apathogenic species closely related which makes them potential virulence factors.