Rhizopus oryzae is the most common cause of mucormycosis, a life threatening disease that afflicts immunocompromised patients including those with elevated available serum iron. Current treatment options are limited and often fail.

The high affinity iron permease (rFTR1) is implicated in acquiring host iron during infection. To elucidate the role of rFTR1 in the virulence of R. oryzae, we developed a reporter system using GFP cloned down stream of the rFTR1 promoter to investigate the expression of rFTR1 in vitro and in vivo.

rFTR1 expression was induced in iron-depleted but not iron-replete conditions in vitro. These iron conditions reflect the host conditions, therefore suggesting that rFTR1 is likely to be expressed during infection. Indeed immunohistochemistry of brains harvested from mice infected with R. oryzae demonstrated the expression of rFTR1 as detected by the presence of GFP in tissues. rFTR1 can be a target for designing therapeutic strategies against mucormycosis.