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Identification and functional characterization of cryptic secondary metabolite gene clusters and comparative genomics in Fusarium fujikuroi

Subject Area Plant Biochemistry and Biophysics
Term from 2010 to 2017
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 175227329
 
Final Report Year 2017

Final Report Abstract

The increasing number of sequenced fungal genomes revealed the enormous potential of fungi to produce a multitude of natural products. However, the majority of SM gene clusters are silent under laboratory conditions, and therefore, their products are still unknown. The growing interest in identification of novel fungal SMs with potential applications in medicine, food industry and agriculture resulted in efforts to activate them by using different molecular techniques. During the last years, we tried to shed more light into the genetic potential of the rice pathogenic fungus F. fujikuroi.to produce new SMs. Whereas only three gene clusters for GA, bikaverin and carotenoid biosynthesis were identified and experimentally characterized before the genome has been released in 2013, the products of 20 out of the 47 potential SM gene clusters are now known due to genetic manipulations of key enzyme-encoding genes, pathway-specific and global regulators, and histone-modifying genes. By these approaches we were able to shed more light on the multi-level regulation of secondary metabolism. One of the most surprising results of these studies is that each single gene cluster is regulated by a specific und unique network of regulators. A second topic of this application period was a comparative genomics approach to determine the level of variability between F. fujikuroi isolates from distinct geographic regions.

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