Photo credit: Ellen Kirstine Lyhne

This species was sequenced as a part of the Aspergillus whole-genus sequencing project - a project dedicated to performing whole-genome sequencing of all members of the Aspergillus genus. The Aspergilli is a ubiquitous and species-rich genus, currently containing more than 300 filamentous fungi. The genus covers a wide range of phenotypes and has a substantial economic foot print, as it includes fermenters of foodstuffs, key cell factories for production of enzymes and organic acids, plant pathogens, model organisms for cell biology, human opportunistic pathogens, producers of animal and human mycotoxins, and degraders of a wide range of organic biomass relevant for bioenergy conversion.

Aspergillus campestris (MB 110495)

A. campestris M. Chr. was described in Mycologia 74: 210-225, 1982 (on page 212). It has been found in Prairie soil in North Dakota, USA, rabbit dung, California, USA, from a mouse, Edmonton, Alta., Canada and soil in a chipmunk mound, Snowy Range, Wyoming, USA. Secondary metabolites produced include aspergilazine A, candidusins C and other candidusins, the only flavonoid known from fungi: chlorflavonin, terphenyllin and 3-hydroxyterphenyllin (Rahbæk et al., Phytochemistry 53: 581-586, 2000). Many of the secondary metabolites from A. campestris are antioxidative (Food Chem Toxicol 41: 1561-1567, 2003) or immunosuppressive (Yonezawa et al., J Org Chem 63: 5831-5837, 1998).