Maturation of conidia on conidiophores of Aspergillus niger. Aspergillus niger

An Aspergillus niger colony can produce a few billion conidia. Formation of conidia producing conidiophores starts in the centre of the colony and moves outwards ending a few millimetres from the edge of the radial extending mycelium. As a result, the conidia within the colony centre are older than those in the intermediate and sub-peripheral zones. Here, it was assessed whether this results in heterogeneity of conidia within the colony. Conidia were harvested from conidiophores of cultures resulting from a confluent inoculated plate. A total number of 645-2421 genes were differentially expressed (fold change ≥ 2) when expression profiles of 2-, 5-, and 8-day-old conidia freshly harvested from conidiophores were compared. Genes without a PFAM or KEGG annotation were enriched in the up-regulated genes. Overall design: mRNA profiles of 2-day 5-day and 8-day old conidia of Aspergillus niger were generated by deep sequencing, in duplicate, using Illumina Hiseq.