Abstract
Aspergillus flavus poses a threat to society economy and public health due to aflatoxin production. aflN is a gene located in the aflatoxin gene cluster, but the function of AflN is undefined in Aspergillus flavus. In this study, aflN is knocked out and overexpressed to study the function of AflN. The results indicated that the loss of AflN leads to the defect of aflatoxin biosynthesis. AflN is also found to play a role in conidiation but not hyphal growth and sclerotia development. Moreover, AlfN is related to the response to environmental oxidative stress and intracellular levels of reactive oxygen species. At last, AflN is involved in the pathogenicity of Aspergillus flavus to host. These results suggested that AflN played important roles in aflatoxin biosynthesis, conidiation and reactive oxygen species generation in Aspergillus flavus, which will be helpful for the understanding of aflN function, and will be beneficial to the prevention and control of Aspergillus flavus and aflatoxins contamination.
Highlights
Aspergillus flavus (A. flavus) is a notorious pathogenic fungus, which can produce aflatoxins (AFs) and contaminates many crop seeds, leading to the large economic losses [1].It is worth noting that A. flavus is typically found in soil and distributed worldwide due to its strong survival capability [1,2]
Key Contribution: Our study provides the genetic evidence of aflN involvement in the biosynthesis of aflatoxin; conidiation and oxidative stress response in Aspergillus flavus; which contributes to the better understanding of aflN functions in A. flavus
A. flavus AflN protein was identified from the National Centre for Biotechnology
Summary
Aspergillus flavus (A. flavus) is a notorious pathogenic fungus, which can produce aflatoxins (AFs) and contaminates many crop seeds, leading to the large economic losses [1]. It is worth noting that A. flavus is typically found in soil and distributed worldwide due to its strong survival capability [1,2]. A. flavus poses a threat to society economy and public health. A lasting and deep study on A. flavus will help us better understanding and controlling of A. flavus and AFs. As the main focus of A. flavus study, biosynthesis pathway of AFs is constituted of more than 25 enzymatic reactions [3,4], and these enzyme genes are mainly clustered on chromosome 3 [5]. Many other genes outside the AF gene cluster have effects on the biosynthesis of AF [6,7]. CreA, which is the master regulator of carbon catabolite repression, was found to regulate the AF biosynthesis and conidia development
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