Brown-rot fungi, a group of wood rotting fungi, is well known to be one of major microorganisms that cause the deterioration of wooden buildings in Japan and have been considered to use chelator-mediated Fenton (CMF) reaction in concert with hydrolytic and redox enzymes for degradation of wood cell wall. CMF can be described as a non-enzymatic degradation system that utilizes hydroxyl radicals produced by the reaction of hydrogen peroxide with ferrous iron in the presence of chelator, and therefore, the reduction process of ferric iron present in wood cell walls is one of the key reactions in this process. To date, various candidates such as low-molecular weight aromatic metabolites produced by fungi, proteins, and lignolytic products have been proposed as iron-reducing compounds. In addition, lignin polymer has been also reported to have the ability of iron reduction although detailed mechanism is not still unknown. In the present study, the authors investigated the iron reduction with wood flour, which was expected to contain both a part of soluble compounds and cell wall polymers, using ferrozine assay in order to obtain the knowledge of iron reduction mechanism. We show that iron reduction capacity by decayed wood samples was higher than that by the samples of sound wood.

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