Autophagy in Aspergillus salvadorensis as an Adaptive Mechanism to Environmental Stress (2024)

The survival of eukaryotic organisms depends, to a large extent, on autophagy, a highly conserved cellular process that regulates homeostasis and the stress response in filamentous fungi of the genus Aspergillus. In this study, he focuses on a genomic and functional analysis to locate the autophagy components in Aspergillus salvadorensisin its DNA sequence. After bioinformatic annotations on Illumina platforms in MACROGEN INC, autophagy genes were found in MetaCyc/EggNOG/KEGG/ Uniref90/K/Kegg abstract, solid candidates for fundamental ATG genes were identified, including atg1, atg7, atg8 and atg13 homologues. By closely examining the sequences, we found open reading frames that exhibit the typical structural features of autophagic cycle effector proteins. When analyzing the DNA sequence, a segment between nucleotides 550 and 720 that has regulatory domain properties, which seems to be activated in response to metabolic alert signals. On the other hand, the fragment located between nucleotides 1234 and 1573 showed a clear affinity with Atg8-type proteins. The most relevant thing here is the presence of a preserved wisteria at the C-terminal end; this residue is vital for lipidation and anchoring of the protein to the autophagosome membrane, confirming that A. salvadorensis possesses the machinery necessary to form and mature these cleansing vesicles. From a physiological point of view, the synergy between autophagy, heat shock proteins (HSPs) and antioxidant systems explains the remarkable thermotolerance of this species. When the temperature rises above 60 C and exposure to hydrogen peroxide to 10%, protein damage increases; while the chaperones try to repair what can be saved, the autophagic pathway removes irrecoverable waste to prevent the accumulation of toxic structures inside. Overall, genomic data suggest that this species has a robust and active cellular recycling network, a determining factor for its resilience in the demanding tropical savannah climates of El Salvador.