Angelique C W Franken, Beatrix E Lechner, Ernst R Werner, Hubertus Haas, B Christien Lokman, Arthur F J Ram, Cees A M J J van den Hondel, Sandra de Weert, Peter J Punt
Iron is an essential metal for many organisms, but the biologically relevant form of iron is scarce because of rapid oxidation resulting in low solubility. Simultaneously, excessive accumulation of iron is toxic. Consequently, iron uptake is a highly controlled process. In most fungal species, siderophores play a central role in iron handling. Siderophores are small iron-specific chelators that can be secreted to scavenge environmental iron or bind intracellular iron with high affinity. A second high-affinity iron uptake mechanism is reductive iron assimilation (RIA)...
November 2014: Briefings in Functional Genomics