scholarly journals The impact of bZIP Atf1ortholog global regulators in fungi

Author(s):  
Éva Leiter ◽  
Tamás Emri ◽  
Klaudia Pákozdi ◽  
László Hornok ◽  
István Pócsi

Abstract Regulation of signal transduction pathways is crucial for the maintenance of cellular homeostasis and organismal development in fungi. Transcription factors are key elements of this regulatory network. The basic-region leucine zipper (bZIP) domain of the bZIP-type transcription factors is responsible for DNA binding while their leucine zipper structural motifs are suitable for dimerization with each other facilitiating the formation of homodimeric or heterodimeric bZIP proteins. This review highlights recent knowledge on the function of fungal orthologs of the Schizosaccharomyces pombe Atf1, Aspergillus nidulans AtfA, and Fusarium verticillioides FvAtfA, bZIP-type transcription factors with a special focus on pathogenic species. We demonstrate that fungal Atf1-AtfA-FvAtfA orthologs play an important role in vegetative growth, sexual and asexual development, stress response, secondary metabolite production, and virulence both in human pathogens, including Aspergillus fumigatus, Mucor circinelloides, Penicillium marneffei, and Cryptococcus neoformans and plant pathogens, like Fusarium ssp., Magnaporthe oryzae, Claviceps purpurea, Botrytis cinerea, and Verticillium dahliae. Key points • Atf1 orthologs play crucial role in the growth and development of fungi. • Atf1 orthologs orchestrate environmental stress response of fungi. • Secondary metabolite production and virulence are coordinated by Atf1 orthologs.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Vanhaelewyn ◽  
Dominique Van Der Straeten ◽  
Barbara De Coninck ◽  
Filip Vandenbussche

Ultraviolet (UV) radiation directly affects plants and microorganisms, but also alters the species-specific interactions between them. The distinct bands of UV radiation, UV-A, UV-B, and UV-C have different effects on plants and their associated microorganisms. While UV-A and UV-B mainly affect morphogenesis and phototropism, UV-B and UV-C strongly trigger secondary metabolite production. Short wave (<350 nm) UV radiation negatively affects plant pathogens in direct and indirect ways. Direct effects can be ascribed to DNA damage, protein polymerization, enzyme inactivation and increased cell membrane permeability. UV-C is the most energetic radiation and is thus more effective at lower doses to kill microorganisms, but by consequence also often causes plant damage. Indirect effects can be ascribed to UV-B specific pathways such as the UVR8-dependent upregulated defense responses in plants, UV-B and UV-C upregulated ROS accumulation, and secondary metabolite production such as phenolic compounds. In this review, we summarize the physiological and molecular effects of UV radiation on plants, microorganisms and their interactions. Considerations for the use of UV radiation to control microorganisms, pathogenic as well as non-pathogenic, are listed. Effects can be indirect by increasing specialized metabolites with plant pre-treatment, or by directly affecting microorganisms.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulysses Amancio de Frias ◽  
Greicy Kelly Bonifacio Pereira ◽  
María-Eugenia Guazzaroni ◽  
Rafael Silva-Rocha

Bacteria are a source of a large number of secondary metabolites with several biomedical and biotechnological applications. In recent years, there has been tremendous progress in the development of novel synthetic biology approaches both to increase the production rate of secondary metabolites of interest in native producers and to mine and reconstruct novel biosynthetic gene clusters in heterologous hosts. Here, we present the recent advances toward the engineering of novel microbial biosensors to detect the synthesis of secondary metabolites in bacteria and in the development of synthetic promoters and expression systems aiming at the construction of microbial cell factories for the production of these compounds. We place special focus on the potential of Gram-negative bacteria as a source of biosynthetic gene clusters and hosts for pathway assembly, on the construction and characterization of novel promoters for native hosts, and on the use of computer-aided design of novel pathways and expression systems for secondary metabolite production. Finally, we discuss some of the potentials and limitations of the approaches that are currently being developed and we highlight new directions that could be addressed in the field.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 5671
Author(s):  
Mohsen Hesami ◽  
Austin Baiton ◽  
Milad Alizadeh ◽  
Marco Pepe ◽  
Davoud Torkamaneh ◽  
...  

For a long time, Cannabis sativa has been used for therapeutic and industrial purposes. Due to its increasing demand in medicine, recreation, and industry, there is a dire need to apply new biotechnological tools to introduce new genotypes with desirable traits and enhanced secondary metabolite production. Micropropagation, conservation, cell suspension culture, hairy root culture, polyploidy manipulation, and Agrobacterium-mediated gene transformation have been studied and used in cannabis. However, some obstacles such as the low rate of transgenic plant regeneration and low efficiency of secondary metabolite production in hairy root culture and cell suspension culture have restricted the application of these approaches in cannabis. In the current review, in vitro culture and genetic engineering methods in cannabis along with other promising techniques such as morphogenic genes, new computational approaches, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), CRISPR/Cas9-equipped Agrobacterium-mediated genome editing, and hairy root culture, that can help improve gene transformation and plant regeneration, as well as enhance secondary metabolite production, have been highlighted and discussed.


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