説明
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Known as the smell of earth after rain, geosmin is an odorous terpene detectable by humans at picomolar concentrations. Geosmin production is heavily conserved in actinobacteria, myxobacteria, cyanobacteria, and some fungi, but its biological activity is poorly understood. We theorized that geosmin was an aposematic signal used to indicate the unpalatability of toxin-producing microbes, discouraging predation by eukaryotes. Consistent with this hypothesis we found that geosmin and the related terpene 2-methylisoborneol reduced predation of<jats:italic>Streptomyces coelicolor</jats:italic>and<jats:italic>Myxococcus xanthus</jats:italic>by the bacteriophagous<jats:italic>Caenorhabditis elegans</jats:italic>. Predation was restored by the removal of both terpene biosynthetic pathways or deletion of the<jats:italic>C. elegans</jats:italic>ASE sensory neuron, and resulted in the death of the nematodes. Geosmin itself was non-toxic. This is the first warning chemical to be identified in bacteria or fungi, and suggests molecular signalling affects microbial predator-prey interactions in a manner similar to the well-studied visual markers of poisonous animal prey.</jats:p>
収録刊行物
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- bioRxiv
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bioRxiv 2021-03-10
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
