While the medicinal fungus Inonotus obliquus produces polyphenols as one of its main metabolites in natural habitats, it accumulates less polyphenols under laboratory conditions. In this study we found that the continuous addition of 1 mM H(2)O(2) at a rate of 1.6 ml/h into a submerged culture of the fungus enhanced its production of mycelia, melanins, flavonoids and hispidin analogs (HA). Simu...

Terbinafine is a recommended therapeutic alternative for patients with sporotrichosis who cannot use itraconazole due to drug interactions or side effects. Melanins are involved in resistance to antifungal drugs and Sporothrix species produce three different types of melanin. Therefore, in this study we evaluated whether Sporothrix melanins impact the efficacy of antifungal drugs. Minimal inhib...

The brown to black coloration found in plants is due to the melanins, which have been relatively poorly investigated among the plant pigments. The aim of this work was to study the dark pigment extracted from the black oat hull with respect to composition and structure. Ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy, matrix-assisted laser desorptio...

The last decade has witnessed a quantum jump in our knowledge of the chemistry of melanogenesis and the emergence of some understanding as to how the chemical and enzymatic activities are integrated and regulated at cellular level. To an unusual extent, most of these advances stemmed from a molecular approach involving direct analysis of natural melanins coupled with studies of the chemical rea...

Biodegradable electronics represents an attractive and emerging paradigm in medical devices by harnessing simultaneous advantages afforded by electronically active systems and obviating issues with chronic implants. Integrating practical energy sources that are compatible with the envisioned operation of transient devices is an unmet challenge for biodegradable electronics. Although high-perfor...

Melanins serve a variety of protective functions in plants and animals, but in fungi such as Cryptococcus neoformans they are also associated with virulence. A recently developed solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) strategy, based on the incorporation of site-specific (13)C-enriched precursors into melanin, followed by spectroscopy of both powdered and solvent-swelled melanin ghosts, w...