Co-culture of Aspergillus niger IFM 59706 and RAW264 cells enhances the production of aurasperone A with NO inhibitory activity

Yukiko Ujie; Shun Saito; Tomoya Banno; Takashi Yaguchi; Midori A Arai

doi:10.1093/bbb/zbae211

Co-culture of Aspergillus niger IFM 59706 and RAW264 cells enhances the production of aurasperone A with NO inhibitory activity

Biosci Biotechnol Biochem. 2024 Dec 30:zbae211. doi: 10.1093/bbb/zbae211. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yukiko Ujie¹, Shun Saito¹, Tomoya Banno¹, Takashi Yaguchi², Midori A Arai¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan.
² Medical Mycology Research Center, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan.

PMID: 39737716
DOI: 10.1093/bbb/zbae211

Abstract

Most actinomycetes and fungi have a multitude of silent biosynthetic genes whose activation could lead to the production of new natural products. Our group recently designed and used a co-culture method to isolate new natural products, based on the idea that pathogens might produce immune suppressors to avoid attack by immune cells. Here, we searched for compounds produced by the co-culture of immune cells with pathogenic fungi isolated from clinical specimens. The production of dimeric naphtho-γ-pyrone aurasperone A (1) was enhanced by the co-culture of pathogenic fungus Aspergillus niger IFM 59706 and RAW264 mouse macrophage-like cells. The absolute configuration of 1 was confirmed by comparison with the reported electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectrum. This is the first report of the inhibitory activity of 1 on nitric oxide (NO) production, an inflammatory mediator.

Keywords: Aspergillus; co-culture; nitric oxide (NO); secondary metabolite; silent genes.