BACKGROUND The conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to biofuels (second-generation biofuel production) is an environmentally friendlier alternative to petroleum-based energy sources. Enzymatic deconstruction of lignocellulose, catalyzed by filamentous fungi such as Aspergillus nidulans, releases a mixture of mono- and polysaccharides, including hexose (glucose) and pentose (xylose) sugars, cel...

The isoprenoid farnesol was previously shown to induce morphological features characteristic of apoptosis in the filamentous fungus Aspergillus nidulans. This study demonstrates that under similar liquid media growth conditions, farnesol also triggers apoptosis in the plant pathogenic fungus Fusarium graminearum. However, unlike A. nidulans, F. graminearum spores treated with farnesol exhibited...

The exogenous nitric oxide donor, sodium nitroprusside, evaluated the recombinogenic potential of nitric oxide. Drug inhibited mycelial growth and conidiation in A757 Aspergillus nidulans master strain. Two heterozygous diploid strains, one wild (uvsH//uvsH) and the other defective to DNA repair (uvsH//uvsH) were used for recombinagenesis tests. Sodium nitroprusside recombinogenic effect was ev...

A physical map of the 31-megabase Aspergillus nidulans genome is reported, in which 94% of 5,134 cosmids are assigned to 49 contiguous segments. The physical map is the result of a two-way ordering process, in which clones and probes were ordered simultaneously on a binary DNAyDNA hybridization matrix. Compression by elimination of redundant clones resulted in a minimal map, which is a chromoso...

Growth, development, virulence and secondary metabolism in fungi are governed by heterotrimeric G proteins (G proteins). A Gβ-like protein called Gib2 has been shown to function as an atypical Gβ in Gpa1-cAMP signaling in Cryptococcus neoformans. We found that the previously reported CpcB (cross pathway control B) protein is the ortholog of Gib2 in Aspergillus nidulans and Aspergillus fumigatus...

Aspergillus nidulans is poorly exploited as a source of enzymes for lignocellulosic residues degradation for biotechnological purposes. This work describes the A. nidulans Endoglucanase A heterologous expression in Pichia pastoris, the purification and biochemical characterization of the recombinant enzyme. Active recombinant endoglucanase A (rEG A) was efficiently secreted as a 35 kDa protein ...

α-Glucan affects fungal cell-cell interactions and is important for the virulence of pathogenic fungi. Interfering with production of α-glucan could help to prevent fungal infection. In our previous study, we reported that an amylase-like protein, AmyD, could repress α-glucan accumulation in Aspergillus nidulans. However, the underlying molecular mechanism was not clear. Here, we examined the l...

Mitochondrial DNA of the ascomycete fungus Aspergillus nidulans, a circular molecule of 31 500 base pairs, is cleaved by restriction endonucleases Eco R I, Hind II, Hind III and Bgl II into 3, 7, 9 and 5 fragments, respectively. The relative positions of the cleavage sites could be mapped by analysis of fragments obtained by double enzyme digestions of whole DNA and by complete and partial redi...

Resistant strains of Aspergillus nidulans were obtained by one-step selection on high concentrations of various inhibitors; each strain was mutant in a different gene conferring resistance to actidione (Act), p-fluorophenylalanine (p f ) , teoquil ( te) , iodoacetate (Iod) or malachite green (mg). Some mutant alleles have been firmly, others tentatively, located. For comparative purposes attemp...

Sensor histidine kinases (HKs) are important factors that control cellular growth in response to environmental conditions. The expression of 15 HKs from Aspergillus nidulans was analyzed by quantitative real-time PCR under vegetative, asexual, and sexual growth conditions. Most HKs were highly expressed during asexual growth. All HK gene-disrupted strains produced reactive oxygen species (ROS)....