Figure 1.
Phenotypic traits of the wild-type strain of A. carbonarius ITEM 5010 (denoted as ‘wt’, black bars), two ectopic mutants (denoted as ‘E’, gray bars) and three knockout mutants (color-filled bars) of genes otaA (B–D) and veA (E–G), denoted as Δpks and ΔveA, respectively. (A) The front and back colony views of the different strains point-inoculated on PDA plates in the dark at 7 days post-inoculation. Growth area (B,E), conidiation (C,F) and OTA production (D,G) were tested on the PDA plates centrally point-inoculated with 5 uL of 1 × 105 conidia/mL. After incubation at 28 °C for 5 days, colonies were scanned to determine the growth area with the ImageJ software. Three plugs were collected from the center, middle and inner parts of the colony for conidia determination and OTA extraction purposes. Values were normalized to those of the wt growing under the same conditions. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean of at least three biological replicates. The bars with different letters in the same panel are statistically different as determined by the one-way ANOVA and Tukey’s test (p < 0.05). nd. not detected under the assayed conditions.