{"id":64355,"date":"2019-07-01T06:45:46","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T04:45:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rss.nova-institut.net\/public.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.innovations-report.com%2Fhtml%2Freports%2Flife-sciences%2Ffungus-produces-highly-effective-surfactant.html"},"modified":"2019-06-30T16:50:02","modified_gmt":"2019-06-30T14:50:02","slug":"fungus-produces-highly-effective-surfactant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/fungus-produces-highly-effective-surfactant\/","title":{"rendered":"Fungus produces highly effective surfactant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mortierella alpina lives in the soil and likes to keep cool. This fungus, which belongs to the zygomycetes, grows best at temperatures of 10 to 15\u00b0C and occurs mainly in alpine or arctic habitats. In biotechnology, the fungus has been used for the large-scale production of polyunsaturated fatty acids such as arachidonic acids, mainly used as a dietary supplement in baby foods. But M. alpina can do much more: a research team from the Institute of Pharmacy at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, has discovered that this fungus also produces other interesting compounds. In the specialist journal \u2018Organic Letters\u2019, the researchers, led by Dr Markus Gre\u00dfler, present a group of surface-active peptides \u2013 called malpinins \u2013which are produced in large quantities by the fungus (DOI: 10.1021\/acs.orglett.9b00193).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Surfactants are substances that are used in laundry detergents and washing up liquids. Florian Baldeweg, a Pharmacy PhD student and member of Gre\u00dfler\u2019s team, discovered the compounds produced by the fungus when he tried to purify peptides from Mortierella chromatographically. \u201cEven very tiny amounts of malpinins form a head of foam on the top of the sample vial,\u201d says Baldeweg. Baldeweg and Gre\u00dfler have elucidated the structure of these compounds. This previously unknown group of natural surfactants is called malpinins. Their surfactant effect is even stronger than that of SDS (sodium dodecyl sulphate), which is present in many common detergents.<\/p>\n

Transporting active substances through biomembranes<\/h3>\n

However, the Jena researchers do not want to use the natural surfactants for developing new cleaning agents. \u201cWe want to test whether their properties could make the malpinins useful in pharmacology,\u201d explains Gre\u00dfler. This is because surfactants not only facilitate a mixture of oil and water. \u201cBiological membranes, which mainly consist of fatty acids, could be made permeable to pharmaceutical drugs,\u201d adds Gre\u00dfler. This could allow pharmaceutical substances to be transported through cell membranes. Gre\u00dfler and Baldeweg want to test the malpinins to determine their pharmaceutical potential, together with colleagues from the Institute of Pharmacy of Friedrich Schiller University who work with Prof. Dagmar Fischer.<\/p>\n

Lower fungi underestimated as reservoir for natural products<\/h3>\n

The discovery of the natural products in M. alpina is also interesting because up to now, lower fungi such as the zygomycetes have received little attention as producers of secondary metabolites, unlike higher fungi such as Aspergillus species. Gre\u00dfler expects that this will now change: \u201cStudies on the genome of M. alpina have shown that the fungus can produce many more natural products, and the malpinins are just one small group of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Original publication:<\/h3>\n

Baldeweg, F. et al. Fungal Biosurfactants from Mortierella alpina, Organic letters (2019), DOI: 10.1021\/acs.orglett.9b00193<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mortierella alpina lives in the soil and likes to keep cool. This fungus, which belongs to the zygomycetes, grows best at temperatures of 10 to 15\u00b0C and occurs mainly in alpine or arctic habitats. In biotechnology, the fungus has been used for the large-scale production of polyunsaturated fatty acids such as arachidonic acids, mainly used […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[12455,15915,15916],"supplier":[1457],"class_list":["post-64355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-compounds","tag-fungus","tag-surfactant","supplier-universitaet-jena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64355"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=64355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}