Abstract
Although α-1,3-glucan is a major cell wall polysaccharide in filamentous fungi, its biological functions remain unclear, except that it acts as a virulence factor in animal and plant pathogenic fungi: it conceals cell wall β-glucan on the fungal cell surface to circumvent recognition by hosts. However, cell wall α-1,3-glucan is also present in many of non-pathogenic fungi. Recently, the universal function of α-1,3-glucan as an aggregation factor has been demonstrated. Applications of fungi with modified cell wall α-1,3-glucan in the fermentation industry and of in vitro enzymatically-synthesized α-1,3-glucan in bio-plastics have been developed. This review focuses on the recent progress in our understanding of the biological functions and biosynthetic mechanism of cell wall α-1,3-glucan in fungi. We briefly consider the history of studies on α-1,3-glucan, overview its biological functions and biosynthesis, and finally consider the industrial applications of fungi deficient in α-1,3-glucan.
Highlights
The fungal cell wall, which has a complex and dynamic structure and is mainly composed of polysaccharides, plays an essential role in defining cell shape and shielding the cells from environmental stresses, including changes in osmolality, temperature, and pH
Complemented cells synthesized cell wall α-1,3-glucan, and became virulent. These findings suggest that P. brasiliensis Amy1p is involved in cell wall α-1,3-glucan biosynthesis and virulence [60]
Studies of cell wall architecture and biogenesis in filamentous fungi have advanced greatly owing to the availability of genome sequence information and the development of genome-wide analysis tools
Summary
The fungal cell wall, which has a complex and dynamic structure and is mainly composed of polysaccharides, plays an essential role in defining cell shape and shielding the cells from environmental stresses, including changes in osmolality, temperature, and pH. In the early stages of research on biological functions of cell wall α-1,3-glucan in filamentous fungi, Zonneveld performed biochemical analysis in the model fungus Aspergillus nidulans [7,8,19,20,21,22]. These results suggest that the loss of cell wall α-1,3-glucan in the ∆agsB and ∆agsA∆agsB strains increased the exposure of β-1,3-glucan on the cell surface and increased sensitivity to CR [16] He et al [33] reported the function of two α-glucan synthases (AgsA and AgsB) and two α-amylases (AmyD and AmyG) in A. nidulans. In the deletion strains lacking mpkA or rlmA, which are orthologous to S. cerevisiae mpk and rlm, respectively, the genes for β-1,3-glucan and chitin synthases were upregulated by micafungin to the wild-type.
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