Yoshimi Akira, Miyazawa Ken, Abe Keietsu
ABE-Project, New Industry Creation Hatchery Center, Tohoku University, 6-6-10 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8579, Japan.
Laboratory of Applied Microbiology, Department of Microbial Biotechnology, Graduate School of Agricultural Sciences, Tohoku University, 468-1 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-0845, Japan.
J Fungi (Basel). 2017 Nov 18;3(4):63. doi: 10.3390/jof3040063.
Although α-1,3-glucan is a major cell wall polysaccharide in filamentous fungi, its biological functions remain unclear, except that it acts as a virulence factor in animal and plant pathogenic fungi: it conceals cell wall β-glucan on the fungal cell surface to circumvent recognition by hosts. However, cell wall α-1,3-glucan is also present in many of non-pathogenic fungi. Recently, the universal function of α-1,3-glucan as an aggregation factor has been demonstrated. Applications of fungi with modified cell wall α-1,3-glucan in the fermentation industry and of in vitro enzymatically-synthesized α-1,3-glucan in bio-plastics have been developed. This review focuses on the recent progress in our understanding of the biological functions and biosynthetic mechanism of cell wall α-1,3-glucan in fungi. We briefly consider the history of studies on α-1,3-glucan, overview its biological functions and biosynthesis, and finally consider the industrial applications of fungi deficient in α-1,3-glucan.
尽管α-1,3-葡聚糖是丝状真菌细胞壁中的一种主要多糖，但其生物学功能仍不清楚，仅知道它在动植物病原真菌中作为一种毒力因子：它在真菌细胞表面掩盖细胞壁β-葡聚糖，以规避宿主的识别。然而，细胞壁α-1,3-葡聚糖也存在于许多非致病真菌中。最近，已证明α-1,3-葡聚糖作为聚集因子的普遍功能。已开发出细胞壁α-1,3-葡聚糖修饰的真菌在发酵工业中的应用以及体外酶促合成的α-1,3-葡聚糖在生物塑料中的应用。本综述重点关注我们对真菌细胞壁α-1,3-葡聚糖的生物学功能和生物合成机制的最新认识进展。我们简要回顾了α-1,3-葡聚糖的研究历史，概述其生物学功能和生物合成，最后探讨了缺乏α-1,3-葡聚糖的真菌的工业应用。
