Abstract
Aspergillus section Flavi includes some of the most famous mycotoxin producing filamentous fungi known to mankind. In recent years a number of new species have been included in section Flavi, however these species have been much less studied from a chemical point of view. In this study, we explored one representative strain of a total of 28 fungal species in section Flavi by systematically evaluating the relationship between taxonomy and secondary metabolites with LC-MS/MS analysis for the first time and dereplication through an in-house database and the Global Natural Product Social Molecular Networking (GNPS) platform. This approach allowed rapid identification of two new cyclopiazonic acid producers (A. alliaceus and A. arachidicola) and two new tenuazonic acid producers (A. arachidicola and A. leporis). Moreover, for the first time we report species from section Flavi to produce fumifungin and sphingofungins B-D. Altogether, this study emphasizes that the chemical diversity of species in genus Aspergillus section Flavi is larger than previously recognized, and especially that understudied species are prolific producers of important mycotoxins such as fumi- and sphingofungins not previously reported from this section. Furthermore, our work demonstrates Global Natural Product Social (GNPS) Molecular Networking as a powerful tool for large-scale chemotaxonomic analysis of closely related species in filamentous fungi.
Highlights
Aspergillus section Flavi comprises a large number of species, many of which have a significant impact on human health and the society (Varga et al, 2011)
In this report we have applied a Global Natural Products Social (GNPS) molecular networking based strategy consisting of taxonomic information and an in-house fungal metabolite library search with the aim of identifying new metabolite families and finding new mycotoxin producers from a set of 28 strains representing individual species in Aspergillus section Flavi (Kildgaard et al, 2014)
In order to comprehensively investigate the chemical diversity of section Flavi, 28 strains of each representing individual species from five series in genus Aspergillus section Flavi were three point inoculated on Czapek Yeast Agar (CYA)
Summary
Aspergillus section Flavi comprises a large number of species, many of which have a significant impact on human health and the society (Varga et al, 2011). In this report we have applied a GNPS molecular networking based strategy consisting of taxonomic information and an in-house fungal metabolite library search with the aim of identifying new metabolite families and finding new mycotoxin producers from a set of 28 strains representing individual species in Aspergillus section Flavi (Kildgaard et al, 2014). The dereplication process by molecular networking itself annotates only a limited number of nodes because of the limited amount of MS files for fungal secondary metabolites in the GNPS library To this end, an in-house MS/MS library was implemented in this report to efficiently target important mycotoxins as well as unidentified analogs across species in section Flavi (Kildgaard et al, 2014). This study highlights novel species-specific and series-specific metabolite production relationships and enables the prioritization of strains for future MS-guided natural product discovery projects
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