Projects / Programmes
Charaterisation of the enzymes involved in cyclic AMP metabolism in fungus Aspergillus niger
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 1.04.02 |
Natural sciences and mathematics |
Chemistry |
Structural chemistry |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| B230 |
Biomedical sciences |
Microbiology, bacteriology, virology, mycology |
| P310 |
Natural sciences and mathematics |
Proteins, enzymology |
Aspergillus niger, metabolic regulation, signal transduction, cyclic AMP, phosphodiesterase, cAMP-dependent protein kinase, transformation, morphology.
Researchers (2)
| no. |
Code |
Name and surname |
Research area |
Role |
Period |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
06109 |
PhD Katarina Jernejc |
Biotechnology |
Researcher |
1999 |
107 |
| 2. |
09354 |
PhD Matic Legiša |
Biotechnology |
Head |
1998 - 1999 |
272 |
Organisations (1)
| no. |
Code |
Research organisation |
City |
Registration number |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
0104 |
National Institute of Chemistry |
Ljubljana |
5051592000 |
21,007 |
Abstract
Cyclic AMP plays a major role in differentiation and metabolic regulation in a number of micro-organisms including filamentous fungus Aspegillus niger. Since the mechanisms of signal transdruction are different among particular species, it is very important to study them individually. Information of such mechanisms is extremely useful for biotechnologically important micro-organisms including Aspergillus niger.
So far cAMP-dependent protein kinase was characterised, the enzyme which is activated after the increase in cAMP level and conducts phosphorylation of a number of target enzymes. Two genes coding for catalytic and regulatory subunit were isolated cloned and characterised. With transformants containing increased copy number of individual gene as well as with strains where the genes were silenced, new information about the physiology of fungus was obtained. Another transformant with multiple copy number of both genes was able to synthesise higher amount of holoenzyme and it was used for isolation and characterisation of the enzyme.
Phosphodiesterase is another enzyme involved in metabolism of cAMP which we would like to investigate. Preliminary results have shown that this enzyme is activated by light. Two methods were used for isolation of the gene from the genomic library but unfortunately both failed. In future we will try to find the gene by complementation.
