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A chitinase gene, chiB, involved in the autolytic process of Aspergillus nidulans

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Abstract

Chitinases are thought to be involved in the morphogenesis and autolysis of filamentous fungi. We cloned a gene (chiB) encoding a class V chitinase from Aspergillus nidulans. ChiB expressed in Escherichia coli had chitin-hydrolyzing activity, indicating that chiB encoded a chitinase. Deletion of chiB affected neither germination efficiency nor hyphal growth rate, but considerably reduced the intracellular and extracellular chitinase activities. The decrease in hyphal dry weight during autolytic phase was slower in the mutant than in the wild-type strain. Western blot analysis indicated that the quantity of ChiB significantly increased when the wild-type mycelia were starved for carbon sources, a condition that induced hyphal autolysis. These results suggest that chiB plays an important role in the autolytic process in A. nidulans.

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Acknowledgments

Allosamidin and demethylallosamidin were kindly provided by Dr. Shohei Sakuda (The University of Tokyo). The CA4 strain was kindly provided by Dr. Masashi Kato (Nagoya University). We thank Dr. Shigeo Suzuki (The University of Tokyo) and Mr. Jun-ichi Kaneko (The University of Tokyo) for their technical supports. We are grateful to Dr. Thomas Zimmer (Friedrich Schiller University Jena) for his constructive discussion. This work was performed using the facilities of the Biotechnology Research Center of the University of Tokyo. This work was partly supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan and partly supported by the Bio-Oriented Technology Research Advancement Institution (BRAIN) of Japan.

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Author notes

  1. Daisuke Yamazaki

    Present address: Department of Biochemistry, Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Shirokanedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo, 108-8639, Japan

  2. Naoki Takaya

    Present address: Institute of Applied Biochemistry, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8572, Japan

  3. Masamichi Takagi

    Present address: Faculty of Applied Life Sciences, Niigata University of Pharmacy and Applied Life Sciences, Higashijima 265-1 Niitsu, Niigataiitsu, 956-8603, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology, The University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8657, Japan

    Harutake Yamazaki, Daisuke Yamazaki, Naoki Takaya, Masamichi Takagi, Akinori Ohta & Hiroyuki Horiuchi

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  1. Harutake Yamazaki
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  2. Daisuke Yamazaki
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  4. Masamichi Takagi
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  5. Akinori Ohta
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  6. Hiroyuki Horiuchi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hiroyuki Horiuchi.

Additional information

Communicated by A. Brakhage.

Harutake Yamazaki and Daisuke Yamazaki have contributed equally to this work. The sequence reported in this paper has been deposited in the DDBJ data base (accession no. D87063).

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Yamazaki, H., Yamazaki, D., Takaya, N. et al. A chitinase gene, chiB, involved in the autolytic process of Aspergillus nidulans . Curr Genet 51, 89–98 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-006-0109-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00294-006-0109-7

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