Li Dehai, Professor of Ocean University of China, reported the new discovery of silencing gene activation in marine microorganisms

Recently, Professor Li Dehai's research team of Ocean University of China discovered a fungus that can "eat DMSO" in the process of activating the silencing gene of marine microorganisms with epigenetic modifiers Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), as a commonly used solvent, has good stability in vivo The strain (neoartorya udagawae hdn13-313) can degrade DMSO used as a solvent, and then integrate DMSO degradation products into other metabolites produced by the strain, thus forming a series of novel active products on the aromatic ring Initially, the researchers tried to activate the metabolic potential of fungi by adding epigenetic modifiers such as DNA methyltransferase inhibitors (5-azacytidine, 5-aza-2-deoxycytidine, etc.) and histone deacetylase inhibitors (Saha, sbha, etc.) In this process, DMSO is used as a solvent to dissolve these small molecular inhibitors Later, the researchers found that a mangrove endophytic fungus neosartorya udagawae hdn13-313 was very sensitive to 5-azacytidine, a DNA methyltransferase inhibitor New metabolites could be produced by shaking and static culture New compounds 1 and 2 containing methanesulfonyl group were isolated and identified In fact, compounds containing methanesulfonyl groups in natural products are very rare, so researchers are very curious about the source of methanesulfonyl groups in two new compounds Through further exploration, the researchers found that compound 1 can be produced only when DMSO is added, while compound 2 can only be produced when both DMSO and 5-azacytidine are present Therefore, it is speculated that the methanesulfonyl group in the two compounds may come from DMSO In order to verify this conjecture, the author has carried out the isotope labeling experiment, that is, the addition experiment of DMSO replaced by deuterium DMSO (dmso-d 6) It is found that the methyl groups on the two compounds are deuterium substituted, which confirms the above conjecture DMSO is a solvent with good stability and an environmental pollutant In order to degrade this environmental pollutant, it has been reported in the previous literature that the microorganisms that degrade DMSO, such as Arthrobacter and hyphomacrobium, generally reduce DMS to DMS first, and then oxidize DMS to sulfate, formaldehyde or CO2; in addition, there are some microorganisms, such as Rhodococcus sp SY1, Alcaligenes sp E1 and Cryptococcus humiolus wu-2, which oxidize DMSO to sulfate, formaldehyde or CO2 DMSO 2 is then degraded to MeOH, methane and sulfate It is the first report that fungi can degrade DMSO and integrate the degradation products into its metabolites This study also provides a clue to explore the unique metabolic mechanism of marine microorganisms from special environment In addition, the compound 2 formed after methanesulphonylation also has the same lipid-lowering activity as simvastatin, which indicates that this process has certain significance to improve the biological activity of the compound The research results were published in J NAT Prod (DOI: 10.1021 / ACS Jnatprod 9b00035) with Dr Yu Guihong as the first author.