It is known that, microorganisms produce antibiotic compounds for their survival in an competitive environment, but when a fungi-isolate is been cultivated in sterile medium in lab, why do the fungi produce antibiotic compounds?
competition is also a kind of stress. isn't it?
It may be this way that the production of antibiotic compounds are simply a by product of spontaneous metabolism of the organism.. i have no proofs to say this.
but, i grow this fungi in my lab feeding all nutrients required(optimized broth medium) at steril condition. and they are growing happily but, produce antibiotics.
Thanks for the answers and interest..
My cultivation method is optimized. In general, not only me but anyone working on facultative fungi will have optimized reproducible method for fungal cultivation. so that, there are less chances to think about the ''variables'' in terms of reasons for specific compounds.
On the other hand, these microorganisms may have general genetic information to produce such antibiotic compounds no matter where they are growing..but, it can be hypothesised that they may produce not only one type of antibiotics but diverse antimicrobial compounds in in-vivo situation according to their stress, as you said.
For example: i identified antibiotic compound ''x'' from strain A in-vitro. i can not argue that strain-A can produce only antibiotic compound ''x''.
it can be hypothesised that the same strain A in-vivo may produce not only antibiotic compound ''x'' but also ''y'' and ''z'' depends on its stress conditions. what do you think??
In the case of actinomicetales it was shown that secondary metabolites production can be triggered by the lowering of concentrations of some nutrients, (glucose, phosphate, some amino-acids) or by the increasing concentrations of "autoregulators" (small molecules produced in very low amounts, whose concentration signals cell density ). These conditions trigger the production of proteins that regulate transcriptions of genes not expressed during vegetative growth, that are generally connected to morphological differentiation.
I can only agree with the answers from P. Hufendiek and A. Lazzarini. You might want to have a look at the following review article and the references therein to get a better idea on how fungi and bacteria are 'pushed' to produce secondary metabolites: "Metabolite induction via microorganism co-culture: A potential way to enhance chemical diversity for drug discovery" (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0734975014000378)
hi, my question is off topic.... when placing the root of a plant on agar with antibiotic, is it possible for the endophytic fungi growing to absorb antibiotic in agar and then to convey antibacterial properties during in vitro testing, which are actually from the antibiotic in agar and not produced by the fungi itself
Dear Zainub Aboobaker, Of course it is possible to test your hypothesis by doing spike study where you prepare dual agar plate with and without antibiotics and grow a small piece of root of a same plant. After the culture period, proceed with antimicrobial test and the results may answer to the hypothesis..All the best
Am working on fungi and would like to know wether the antibiotics and extra cellular enzymes they produce can make the fungi resistant to anti fungals during sterlization? Any articles on the same is well appreciated
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