The fungus Aspergillus fumigatus produces a group of previously unknown natural products. With reference to plant isoquinoline alkaloids,these substances have been named fumisoquins. Researchers from Jena (Germany) discovered the novel substances together with their American colleagues while studying the fungal genome. The family of isoquinoline alkaloids contains many pharmacologically active molecules. This study, which has just been published in Nature Chemical Biology, and shows that fungi and plants developed biosynthetic pathways for these complex molecules independently of each other. These findings obtain Aspergillus an piquant target for the discovery of novel drugs and their biotechnological production.
Source: phys.org