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Toxins
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Molecular Genetics of Secondary Metabolite Biosynthesis in Fungal that Interact...
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Molecular Genetics of Secondary Metabolite Biosynthesis in Fungal that Interact with Plants and Animals

A special issue of Toxins (ISSN 2072-6651).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 September 2019) | Viewed by 10711

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Donald Gardiner

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Agriculture and Food, 306 Carmody Road, St Lucia, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Many fungi have the potential to produce a diverse suite of secondary metabolites, many of which can be toxic to various plants and animals. The biosynthesis of these molecules is often encoded in gene clusters in the genomes of producing organisms. In the last few decades, advances in genomics and metabolite analytical technologies has started linking many gene clusters to metabolites, but we are still only scratching the surface of the chemical diversity that fungi produce.

This Special Issue will collect recent studies on understanding how toxins (and secondary metabolites in general) are biosynthesised by fungi with a focus on fungi associated with plants and animals. Many of these interactions with plants and animals are pathogenic, but beneficial interactions, particularly between plants and fungi, are also common. The Issue hopes to cover the areas of genomics, biosynthetic pathway elucidation, regulation and regulatory networks, toxicology, and pathogenicity/virulence aspects of toxin biosynthesis by fungi.

Dr. Donald Gardiner
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Toxins is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • mycotoxin
  • contamination
  • genomics
  • regulation
  • virulence
  • non-ribosomal peptide synthetase
  • terpenoid
  • polyketide

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 2249 KiB  
Article
The Histone Deacetylases HosA and HdaA Affect the Phenotype and Transcriptomic and Metabolic Profiles of Aspergillus niger
by Xuejie Li, Lijie Pan, Bin Wang and Li Pan
Toxins 2019, 11(9), 520; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/toxins11090520 - 07 Sep 2019
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 4022
Abstract
Histone acetylation is an important modification for the regulation of chromatin accessibility and is controlled by two kinds of histone-modifying enzymes: histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs). In filamentous fungi, there is increasing evidence that HATs and HDACs are critical factors related [...] Read more.
Histone acetylation is an important modification for the regulation of chromatin accessibility and is controlled by two kinds of histone-modifying enzymes: histone acetyltransferases (HATs) and histone deacetylases (HDACs). In filamentous fungi, there is increasing evidence that HATs and HDACs are critical factors related to mycelial growth, stress response, pathogenicity and production of secondary metabolites (SMs). In this study, seven A. niger histone deacetylase-deficient strains were constructed to investigate their effects on the strain growth phenotype as well as the transcriptomic and metabolic profiles of secondary metabolic pathways. Phenotypic analysis showed that deletion of hosA in A. niger FGSC A1279 leads to a significant reduction in growth, pigment production, sporulation and stress resistance, and deletion of hdaA leads to an increase in pigment production in liquid CD medium. According to the metabolomic analysis, the production of the well-known secondary metabolite fumonisin was reduced in both the hosA and hdaA mutants, and the production of kojic acid was reduced in the hdaA mutant and slightly increased in the hosA mutant. Results suggested that the histone deacetylases HosA and HdaA play a role in development and SM biosynthesis in A. niger FGSC A1279. Histone deacetylases offer new strategies for regulation of SM synthesis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Molecular Genetics of Secondary Metabolite Biosynthesis in Fungal that Interact with Plants and Animals)
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15 pages, 2048 KiB  
Article
Effects of Different Carbon Sources on Fumonisin Production and FUM Gene Expression by Fusarium proliferatum
by Yu Wu, Taotao Li, Liang Gong, Yong Wang and Yueming Jiang
Toxins 2019, 11(5), 289; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/toxins11050289 - 22 May 2019
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3021
Abstract
Fusarium proliferatum can infect many crops and then produce fumonisins that are very harmful to humans and animals. Previous study indicates that carbon sources play important roles in regulating the fumonisin biosynthesis. Unfortunately, there is limited information on the effects of carbon starvation [...] Read more.
Fusarium proliferatum can infect many crops and then produce fumonisins that are very harmful to humans and animals. Previous study indicates that carbon sources play important roles in regulating the fumonisin biosynthesis. Unfortunately, there is limited information on the effects of carbon starvation in comparison with the carbon sources present in the host of fumonisin production in F. proliferatum. Our results indicated that F. proliferatum cultivated in the Czapek’s broth (CB) medium in the absence of sucrose could greatly induce production of fumonisin, while an additional supplementation of sucrose to the culture medium significantly reduced the fumonisin production. Furthermore, cellulose and hemicellulose, and polysaccharide extracted from banana peel, which replaced sucrose as the carbon source, can reduce the production of fumonisin by F. proliferatum. Further work showed that these genes related to the synthesis of fumonisin, such as FUM1 and FUM8, were significantly up-regulated in the culture medium in the absence of sucrose. Consistent with fumonisin production, the expressions of FUM gene cluster and ZFR1 gene decreased after the addition of sucrose. Moreover, these genes were also significantly down-regulated in the presence of cellulose, hemicellulose or polysaccharide extracted from peel. Altogether, our results suggested that fumonisin production was regulated in F. proliferatum in response to different carbon source conditions, and this regulation might be mainly via the transcriptional level. Future work on these expressions of the fumonisin biosynthesis-related genes is needed to further clarify the response under different carbon conditions during the infection of F. proliferatum on banana fruit hosts. The findings in this study will provide a new clue regarding the biological effect of the fumonisin production in response to environmental stress. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Molecular Genetics of Secondary Metabolite Biosynthesis in Fungal that Interact with Plants and Animals)
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21 pages, 3331 KiB  
Article
Transcriptomic Insights into Benzenamine Effects on the Development, Aflatoxin Biosynthesis, and Virulence of Aspergillus flavus
by Mingguan Yang, Laifeng Lu, Shuhua Li, Jing Zhang, Zhenjing Li, Shufen Wu, Qingbin Guo, Huanhuan Liu and Changlu Wang
Toxins 2019, 11(2), 70; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/toxins11020070 - 27 Jan 2019
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3293
Abstract
Aspergillus flavus is a soilborne pathogenic fungus that poses a serious public health threat due to it contamination of food with carcinogenic aflatoxins. Our previous studies have demonstrated that benzenamine displayed strong inhibitory effects on the mycelial growth of A. flavus. In [...] Read more.
Aspergillus flavus is a soilborne pathogenic fungus that poses a serious public health threat due to it contamination of food with carcinogenic aflatoxins. Our previous studies have demonstrated that benzenamine displayed strong inhibitory effects on the mycelial growth of A. flavus. In this study, we systematically investigated the inhibitory effects of benzenamine on the development, aflatoxin biosynthesis, and virulence in A. flavus, as well as the underlying mechanism. The results indicated that benzenamine exhibited great capacity to combat A. flavus at a concentration of 100 µL/L, leading to significantly decreased aflatoxin accumulation and colonization capacity in maize. The transcriptional profile revealed that 3589 genes show altered mRNA levels in the A. flavus after treatment with benzenamine, including 1890 down-regulated and 1699 up-regulated genes. Most of the differentially expressed genes participated in the biosynthesis and metabolism of amino acid, purine metabolism, and protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum. Additionally, the results brought us to a suggestion that benzenamine affects the development, aflatoxin biosynthesis, and pathogenicity of A. flavus via down-regulating related genes by depressing the expression of the global regulatory factor leaA. Overall, this study indicates that benzenamine have tremendous potential to act as a fumigant against pathogenic A. flavus. Furthermore, this work offers valuable information regarding the underlying antifungal mechanism of benzenamine against A. flavus at the level of transcription, and these potential targets may be conducive in developing new strategies for preventing aflatoxin contamination. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Molecular Genetics of Secondary Metabolite Biosynthesis in Fungal that Interact with Plants and Animals)
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