Community profiling and gene expression of fungal assimilatory nitrate reductases in agricultural soil

Although fungi contribute significantly to the microbial biomass in terrestrial ecosystems, little is known about their contribution to biogeochemical nitrogen cycles. Agricultural soils usually contain comparably high amounts of inorganic nitrogen, mainly in the form of nitrate. Many studies focused on bacterial and archaeal turnover of nitrate by nitrification, denitrification and assimilation, whereas the fungal role remained largely neglected. To enable research on the fungal contribution to the biogeochemical nitrogen cycle tools for monitoring the presence and expression of fungal assimilatory nitrate reductase genes were developed. To the ∼100 currently available fungal full-length gene sequences, another 109 partial sequences were added by amplification from individual culture isolates, representing all major orders occurring in agricultural soils. The extended database led to the discovery of new horizontal gene transfer events within the fungal kingdom. The newly developed PCR primers were used to study gene pools and gene expression of fungal nitrate reductases in agricultural soils. The availability of the extended database allowed affiliation of many sequences to known species, genera or families. Energy supply by a carbon source seems to be the major regulator of nitrate reductase gene expression for fungi in agricultural soils, which is in good agreement with the high energy demand of complete reduction of nitrate to ammonium

Engineering of primary carbon metabolism in filamentous fungi

Filamentous fungi are important industrial cell factories used for the production of a wide range of enzymes and metabolites. Their primary metabolism is a significant source of industrially important compounds, as well as of monomeric building blocks for the production of secondary metabolites and extracellular enzymes. Therefore, large efforts have been made towards the development of suitable strains for the industrial scale production of primary metabolites. Over the last decades, metabolic engineering of primary metabolism has become a powerful tool to enhance production of both primary and secondary metabolites. This review summarises the different metabolic engineering methods that have been applied to rationally improve the production of industrially relevant primary metabolites in filamentous fungi, and discusses related challenges and future perspectives.Peer reviewe

Instrumente der Unternehmenskommunikation: ein Überblick

Zur Prägung des institutionellen Erscheinungsbildes nimmt die Unternehmenskommunikation eine zentrale Rolle ein. Hierbei geht es primär um die Darstellung des gesamten Unternehmens bei ihren vielfältigen Zielgruppen. Dazu stehen den Unternehmen insbesondere die Instrumente der Institutionellen Mediawerbung, des Corporate Sponsoring sowie der Corporate Public Relations zur Verfügung. Der Beitrag liefert einen Überblick über die Unternehmenskommunikation sowie dessen Instrumente. Abschließend wird die Frage der Kontrolle der Instrumente durch Unternehmen thematisiert