Regulation by carbon and nitrogen sources of a family of cellulases in Aspergillus nidulans

The total amount of Aspergillus nidulans secreted cellulases is affected by both the carbon and nitrogen source present in the medium, and is regulated directly and/or indirectly by the carbon metabolism regulators, CreA, CreB, and CreC, and the global nitrogen metabolism regulator, AreA. We have characterized two A. nidulans genes that encode exo-cellulases, and one gene that encodes an endo-cellulase which is additional to the previously described endo-cellulase encoding gene, eglA. The putative regulatory regions 5' of all the genes contain potential binding sites for the global carbon and nitrogen regulatory proteins, CreA and AreA. The sequences 5' of eglA and eglB also contain potential consensus binding sites for XlnR which is involved in induction in Aspergillus niger, but none of the 5' sequences contains an exact copy of the AceII DNA binding consensus sequence involved in induction in Trichoderma reesei, and thus it is likely that they may be induced by different pathway specific regulatory proteins. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.