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© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Antarctica, one of the harshest environments in the world, has been successfully colonized by extremophilic, psychrophilic, and psychrotolerant microorganisms, facing a range of extreme conditions. Fungi are the most diverse taxon in the Antarctic ecosystems, including soils. Genetic adaptation to this environment results in the synthesis of a range of metabolites, with different functional roles in relation to the biotic and abiotic environmental factors, some of which with new biological properties of potential biotechnological interest. An overview on the production of cold-adapted enzymes and other bioactive secondary metabolites from filamentous fungi and yeasts isolated from Antarctic soils is here provided and considerations on their ecological significance are reported. A great number of researches have been carried out to date, based on cultural approaches. More recently, metagenomics approaches are expected to increase our knowledge on metabolic potential of these organisms, leading to the characterization of unculturable taxa. The search on fungi in Antarctica deserves to be improved, since it may represent a useful strategy for finding new metabolic pathways and, consequently, new bioactive compounds.

Details

Title
Extracellular Enzymes and Bioactive Compounds from Antarctic Terrestrial Fungi for Bioprospecting
Author
Zucconi, Laura 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Canini, Fabiana 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Temporiti, Marta Elisabetta 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Tosi, Solveig 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Department of Ecological and Biological Sciences, University of Tuscia, Largo dell’Università snc, 01100 Viterbo, Italy 
 Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Pavia, via S. Epifanio 14, 27100 Pavia, Italy; [email protected] (M.E.T.); [email protected] (S.T.) 
First page
6459
Publication year
2020
Publication date
2020
Publisher
MDPI AG
ISSN
1661-7827
e-ISSN
1660-4601
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2440950835
Copyright
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.