Soft rot diseases cause a great deal of damage in agriculture,
and turn fruits, vegetables, and mushrooms to mush. By using
imaging mass spectrometry together with genetic and
bioinformatic techniques (genome mining), German researchers
have now discovered the substance the bacteria use to decompose
mushrooms. As the scientists report in the journal Angewandte
Chemie, the substance called jagaricin could represent a
starting point for the development of new antifungal drugs.
Button mushrooms with soft rot develop typical lesions and are
eventually completely disintegrate. The pathogen causing soft
rot in cultivated mushrooms has been identified as
Janthinobacterium agarididamnosum. A team led by Christian
Hertweck at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research
and Infection Biology in Jena (Germany) wanted to know which
bacterial compound is responsible for this destruction in order
to better understand the pathobiology and to find possible
protective measures. If the soft rot bacteria produce a substa