ISSN: 0973-7510

E-ISSN: 2581-690X

Research Article | Open Access
Sireesha Radarapu1, Neelima Gorityala2, Uday Kumar Banala3, Someswar Rao Sagurthi2 and Premsagar Korripally1
1Department of Biotechnology, UCS, Mahatma Gandhi University, Nalgonda, Telangana, India.
2Department of Genetics and Biotechnology, Osmania University, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
3Radiological and Environmental Safety Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu, India.
Article Number: 8999 | © The Author(s). 2023
J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2023;17(4):2609-2619. https://doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.17.4.60
Received: 16 September 2023 | Accepted: 11 October 2023 | Published online: 02 December 2023
Issue online: December 2023
Abstract

To unveil the physiological relevance of magnesium and its transport pathways in Neurospora crassa, the vegetative, asexual, and sexual phases of development were investigated. Notably, a regular rate of hyphal growth extension was observed in media without magnesium supplementation. Further, conidia and perithecia formation was completely abolished under the same conditions. By estimating the levels of mycelial cations, magnesium was identified as the 3rd most abundant ion and its transport was found to be mediated by four putative CorA magnesium transporters: Tmg-1, Tmg-2, Tmg-3, and Tmg-4. Among these, the Tmg-4 transporter encoded by the NCU07816.5 (tmg-4) gene possesses a GQN motif instead of the universally conserved GMN motif of CorA magnesium transporters. Phenotypic analysis of the knockout mutant strain, Δtmg-4, revealed stunted vegetative growth, acquired partial cobalt resistance, and reduced levels of mycelial magnesium compared to that of the wild type strain. Further, tmg-4 gene expression remained unchanged during vegetative development but was upregulated by three-fold in the sexual cycle. Collectively, these results validate tmg-4 and its encoded protein as functional novel variant in the CorA superfamily magnesium transporters of fungi.

Keywords

Tmg-4, GQN, STMg, GMN, CorA Superfamily, Neurospora crassa, Sexual Cycle

Article Metrics

Article View: 279

Share This Article

© The Author(s) 2023. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.