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Biosynthetic Profile in the Co-culture of Aspergillus sydowii and Bacillus subtilis to Produce Novel Benzoic Derivatives

  • Fungal Microbiology
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Abstract

Microbial co-culture simulates the natural ecosystem through the combination of artificial microbes. This approach has been widely applied in the study of activating silent genes to reveal novel secondary metabolites. However, there are still challenges in determining the biosynthetic pathways. In this study, the effects of microbial co-culture on the morphology of the microbes were verified by the morphological observation. Subsequently, through the strategy combining substrate feeding, stable isotope labeling, and gene expression analysis, the biosynthetic pathways of five benzoic acid derivatives N1-N4 and N7 were demonstrated: the secondary metabolite 10-deoxygerfelin of A. sydowii acted as an inducer to induce B. subtilis to produce benzoic acid, which was further converted into 3-OH-benzoic acid by A. sydowii. Subsequently, A. sydowii used 3-OH-benzoic acid as the substrate to synthesize the new compound N2, and then N1, N3, N4, and N7 were biosynthesized upon the upregulation of hydrolase, hydroxylase, and acyltransferase during co-culture. The plate zone analysis suggested that the biosynthesis of the newly induced compounds N1-N4 was mainly attributed to A. sydowii, and both A. sydowii and B. subtilis were indispensable for the biosynthesis of N7. This study provides an important basis for a better understanding of the interactions among microorganisms, providing new ideas for studying the biosynthetic pathways of the newly induced secondary metabolites in co-culture.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the grants from the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province of China (2019-ZD-0143) and Science and Technology Development Program of Jilin Province of China (No. 202110401131YY).

Funding

This work was supported by the grants from the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province of China (2019-ZD-0143) and Science and Technology Development Program of Jilin Province of China (No. 202110401131YY).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Bioengineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, Liaoning, China

    Yu Sun, Xuan Shi, Liang-Yu He, Yan Xing, Qin-Feng Guo, Zhi-Long Xiu & Yue-Sheng Dong

Authors
  1. Yu Sun
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  2. Xuan Shi
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  3. Liang-Yu He
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  4. Yan Xing
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  5. Qin-Feng Guo
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  6. Zhi-Long Xiu
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  7. Yue-Sheng Dong
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis, the first draft of the manuscript was written by Yu Sun, Yu Sun and Yue-Sheng Dong conceived and designed the work, Xuan Shi, Liang-Yu He, Quo-Feng Guo and Zhi-Long Xiu participated in the study, Yan Xing polished the language of the paper, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yue-Sheng Dong.

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Ethics Approval

This is an observational study. The XYZ Research Ethics Committee has confirmed that no ethical approval is required.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Sun, Y., Shi, X., He, LY. et al. Biosynthetic Profile in the Co-culture of Aspergillus sydowii and Bacillus subtilis to Produce Novel Benzoic Derivatives. Microb Ecol 85, 1288–1299 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-022-02029-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-022-02029-1

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