Multidisciplinary characterization of melanin pigments from the black fungus Cryomyces antarcticus

Melanin is a natural pigment present in almost all biological group, and is composed by indolic polymers and characterized by black-brown colorization. Furthermore, it is one of the pigments produced by extremophiles including those living in Antarctic desert, and are mainly involved in their protection from high UV radiation, desiccation, salinity and oxidation. Previous studies have shown that melanized species have an increase capability to survive high level of radiation compared to the non-melanized counterpart. Understanding the molecular composition of fungal melanin could help to understand this peculiar capability. Here, we aimed to characterize melanin pigment extracted from the Antarctic black fungus Cryomyces antarcticus, which is a good test model for radioprotection researches, by studying its chemical properties and spectral data. Our results demonstrated that, in spite having a specific type of melanin as the majority of fungi, the fungus possess the ability to produce both DHN and DOPA melanins, opening interesting scenario for the protection role against radiation. Researches on fungal melanin have a huge application in different field, including radioprotection, bioremediation and biomedical applications.