Ehrlich Kenneth C, Mack Brian M
Southern Regional Research Center, Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, New Orleans, LA 70124, USA.
Toxins (Basel). 2014 Jun 23;6(6):1916-28. doi: 10.3390/toxins6061916.
Fifty six secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters are predicted to be in the Aspergillus flavus genome. In spite of this, the biosyntheses of only seven metabolites, including the aflatoxins, kojic acid, cyclopiazonic acid and aflatrem, have been assigned to a particular gene cluster. We used RNA-seq to compare expression of secondary metabolite genes in gene clusters for the closely related fungi A. parasiticus, A. oryzae, and A. flavus S and L sclerotial morphotypes. The data help to refine the identification of probable functional gene clusters within these species. Our results suggest that A. flavus, a prevalent contaminant of maize, cottonseed, peanuts and tree nuts, is capable of producing metabolites which, besides aflatoxin, could be an underappreciated contributor to its toxicity.
据预测,黄曲霉基因组中有56个次生代谢物生物合成基因簇。尽管如此,只有七种代谢物的生物合成,包括黄曲霉毒素、曲酸、环匹阿尼酸和震颤毒素,已被归到特定的基因簇。我们使用RNA测序来比较密切相关的真菌寄生曲霉、米曲霉和黄曲霉S和L菌核形态型基因簇中次生代谢物基因的表达。这些数据有助于完善对这些物种中可能的功能基因簇的识别。我们的结果表明,黄曲霉是玉米、棉籽、花生和坚果中普遍存在的污染物,除了黄曲霉毒素外,它还能够产生一些代谢物,这些代谢物可能是其毒性中未被充分认识的一个因素。