Excited to introduce our lab's latest work describing how bacterial siderophores can provide an advantage to their producers. They can inhibit competitors' specialized metabolism by causing iron deficiency. 1/6 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... - ThreadSky

kyobinkang.bsky.social • 16 days ago

Excited to introduce our lab's latest work describing how bacterial siderophores can provide an advantage to their producers. They can inhibit competitors' specialized metabolism by causing iron deficiency. 1/6

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.12.653243v1

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evodivmet.bsky.social•16 days ago

Congrats! Glad your visit to Leiden paid back. Will read it ;)

kyobinkang.bsky.social•16 days ago

Thank you again for hosting my visit @evodivmet.bsky.social!

kyobinkang.bsky.social•16 days ago

This was an unexpected discovery from our project on 85 Penicillium spp.-B. subtilis cocultures. We expected coculture would boost Penicillium specialized metabolism. However, untargeted metabolomics told us the opposite. Most metabolites showed decreased amount in coculture. 2/6

kyobinkang.bsky.social•16 days ago

We wondered why, and we focused on a metabolite induced by coculture - bacillibactin, a siderophore of B. subtilis. We tested a B. subtilis 168 that cannot produce bacillibactin and saw that the inhibitory effect on specialized metabolism was weaker in cases with this strain. 3/6

kyobinkang.bsky.social•16 days ago

Long story short, the following assays provide more evidence that bacillibactin indeed caused Penicillium species to downregulate their specialized metabolism, causing iron deficiency. Such inhibition of the neighbor's specialized metabolism will be beneficial to siderophore producers. 4/6

kyobinkang.bsky.social•16 days ago

As Penicillium spp. are well-known producers of antibiotic compounds, we wondered if this effect can 'cross-protect' the other bacteria. We performed tripartite cultures of Penicillium-B. subtilis-(E. coli or Ps. putida), and saw that bacillibactin availability decides who will be dominant. 5/6

kyobinkang.bsky.social•16 days ago

I know the clear limitations of this study, but it was such a fun project to do. Huong (my lab PhD candidate) took a lot of effort in this study for years. I really appreciate @evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social
for his priceless advice; it was so lucky to meet him during my visit to Leiden last year. 6/6

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