Fungal natural products comprise a wide range of compounds. Some are medically attractive as drugs and drug leads, some are used as food additives, while others are harmful mycotoxins. In recent years the genome sequence of several fungi has become available providing genetic information of a large number of putative biosynthetic pathways. However, compound discovery is difficult as the genes r...

The cAMP signal pathway controls various biological functions, including secondary metabolism of filamentous fungi. We found that exogenous cAMP represses the production of lovastatin, red pigments, and citrinin in Monascus. Interestingly, a mutant MK-1 with increased lovastatin and red pigments production was not influenced by cAMP on these productions, indicating that cAMP signaling might be ...

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The addition of extracellular ATP (exATP) to four Streptomyces strains had similar effects: low exATP levels stimulated antibiotic production and high levels reduced it. Compared with antibiotic production, the concentrations of intracellular ATP (inATP) in the tested strains were opposite, which suggests a role of inATP in regulating secondary metabolite production. Under inactivation of the p...