ubmerged carbon limited bioreactor batch cultures were performed and maintained starving up to six days after carbon depletion. In addition to describing the physiology and morphology, we ana lyzed the secretome and established http://www.selleckchem.com/products/Y-27632.html genome wide tran scriptional pro?les for three distinct starvation phases. Besides speci?cally dissecting expression data for groups of selected genes including proteases, chitinases and glu canases, we performed enrichment analysis to dissect the complex transcriptional changes. Our investigation shows that carbon starvation in sub merged cultures caused complex morphological changes and cellular di?erentiation including emergence of empty hyphal ghosts, secondary growth of thin non branching ?laments on the expense of older hyphal compartments and formation of conidiating structures.

Concomitantly, autophagy and conidiation pathway genes were clearly induced on the transcriptional level. We propose that metabolic adaptation to carbon starvation is mediated by autophagy and that cell death rather than hydrolytic weak ening of the fungal cell wall can be considered a hallmark of aging carbon starved A. niger cultures. Results Physiology of carbon starved cultures The A. niger wild type strain N402 was cultivated under controlled conditions in bioreactors to study its response to carbon starvation during prolonged sub merged batch cultivation. The de?ned medium had a pH of 3 and was balanced such, that carbon was the growth limiting nutrient.

During expo nential growth, pH 3 was maintained by alkaline addition, which linearly correlated with the biomass accumulation and was previously shown to re?ect ammonium uptake during balanced growth on minimal medium. The end of the exponential growth phase was detected by an increase of the dissolved oxygen signal and depletion of the carbon source was con?rmed by measurements of maltose and glucose con centrations. The corresponding time point was used to synchronize replicate cul tures insuring that samples were taken from equivalent physiological phases. The biomass concentration peaked at 5 g kg?1 culture broth. After maltose was exhausted, pH 3 was maintained by acid addition. The metabolic activity of the culture decreased in response to the lack of an easily accessible carbon and energy source as indi cated by the CO2 production and O2 consumption rates.

Protease activity rapidly increased and was already detected within 3 hours after maltose depletion. During the later starvation phase, the protease activity remained constant, however, extracellu lar protein levels doubled within 16 hours after carbon depletion and remained constant Brefeldin_A thereafter. Towards the end of the starvation phase, the cell mass decreased by nearly 60%. Importantly, CO2 and O2 levels in the exhaust gas indicated selleckbio that the cultures were still metabolically active, even 140 hours after deple tion of the carbon source. Morphological di?erentiation during carbon starvation Throughout the entire cultivation, A.