Cellular and Extracellular Siderophores of Aspergillus nidulans and Penicillium chrysogenum

Abstract

Aspergillus nidulans and Penicillium chrysogenum produce specific cellular siderophores in addition to the well-known siderophores of the culture medium. Since this was found previously in Neurospora crassa, it is probably generally true for filamentous ascomycetes. The cellular siderophore of A. nidulans is ferricrocin; that of P. chrysogenum is ferrichrome. A. nidulans also contains triacetylfusigen, a siderophore without apparent biological activity. Conidia of both species lose siderophores at high salt concentrations and become siderophore dependent. This has also been found in N. crassa, where lowering of the water activity has been shown to be the causal factor. We used an assay procedure based on this dependency to reexamine the extracellular siderophores of these species. During rapid mycelial growth, both A. nidulans and P. chrysogenum produced two highly active, unidentified siderophores which were later replaced by a less active or inactive product--coprogen in the case of P. chrysogenum and triacetylfusigen in the case of A. nidulans. N. crassa secreted coprogen only. Fungal siderophore metabolism is varied and complex.

Genetic Engineering of Talaromyces marneffei to Enhance Siderophore Production and Preliminary Testing for Medical Application Potential

“…Chemical characterization identified the purified siderophore from the ∆sreA as the coprogen B by LC-MS, FTIR, and 1 H and 13 C NMR methods (Table 1). This same structure had also been reported in other medically important Ascomycetous filamentous fungi, such as Penicillium chrysogenum, Alternaria alternata, Aspergillus niger, and Histoplasma capsulatum [43][44][45][46][47][48]. The affinity constants for iron (III) of the coprogen family had been proven by EDTA competition reactions yielded the values log K* = 4.6 and logKFeIII of approximately 30.2, which is close to deferoxamine [49].…”

Metschnikowia pulcherrima strain MACH1 outcompetes Botrytis cinerea, Alternaria alternata and Penicillium expansum in apples through iron depletion

“…Similarly to the tropolone activity, the pigmented zone surrounding the streaks of the strain MACH1 blocked the conidial germination and caused mycelial degeneration of B. cinerea and A. alternata. As conidia require a large intake of iron for germination (Charlang et al, 1981;Calvente et al, 1999), iron depletion by the M. pulcherrima strain delays or reduces conidial germination.…”

Identification of a system for hydroxamate xenosiderophore-mediated iron transport in Burkholderia cenocepacia

“…As B. cenocepacia and other Bcc members have been increasingly observed in polymicrobial respiratory tract infections in CF patients [58,59], the ability of these organisms to use hydroxamate siderophores to pirate iron may provide B. cencocepacia with a similar advantage during infection, depending on the presence of co-infecting hydroxamate siderophore producers such as Achromobacter xylosoxidans (alcaligin), Aspergillus fumigatus and Aspergillus nidulans (TAF, ferricrocin, ferrichrome) and more rarely Bordetella bronchiseptica (alcaligin), Fusarium (TAF, ferricrocin), Penicillium (TAF, ferrichrome) and Rhodotorula (rhodotorulic acid) spp. [56,[60][61][62][63][64][65][66]. B. cenocepacia may also be able to use iron-loaded cepabactin where the CF patient has been co-infected with a cepabactin-producing member of the Bcc, such as B. cepacia [67].…”