Transcriptome analysis of a taxol-producing endophytic fungus Cladosporium cladosporioides MD2

Abstract

The shortage of molecular information for taxol-producing fungi has greatly impeded the understanding of fungal taxol biosynthesis mechanism. In this study, the transcriptome of one taxol-producing endophytic fungus Cladosporium cladosporioides MD2 was sequenced for the first time. About 1.77 Gbp clean reads were generated and further assembled into 16,603 unigenes with an average length of 1110 bp. All of the unigenes were annotated against seven public databases to present the transcriptome characteristics of C. cladosporioides MD2. A total of 12,479 unigenes could be annotated with at least one database, and 1593 unigenes could be annotated in all queried databases. In total, 8425 and 3350 unigenes were categorized into 57 GO functional groups and 262 KEGG pathways, respectively, exhibiting the dominant GO terms and metabolic pathways in the C. cladosporioides MD2 transcriptome. One potential and partial taxol biosynthetic pathway was speculated including 9 unigenes related to terpenoid backbone biosynthesis and 40 unigenes involved in the biosynthetic steps from geranylgeranyl diphosphate to 10-deacetylbaccatin III. These results provided valuable information for the molecular mechanism research of taxol biosynthesis in C. cladosporioides MD2.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s13568-018-0567-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Secondary Metabolite Production and Terpenoid Biosynthesis in Endophytic Fungi Cladosporium cladosporioides Isolated from Wild Cymbopogon martinii (Roxb.) Wats

“…Under in vitro conditions, the endophytic fungus F1 having a pre-existing terpenoid pathway could produce compounds similar to that of the host plant. The transcriptome studies made on endophytic fungus C. cladosporioides expressed the presence of a pathway for terpenoid biosynthesis [49][50][51].…”

Annulohypoxylonsp. strainMUS1, an Endophyte isolated fromTaxus wallichianaZucc. produces Taxol and Other Bioactive Metabolites

“…Therefore, cross-contamination between endophytic fungi and host DNA, as mentioned by Yang et al, 2014 [40], could account for the high similarity between these sequences. In the recent transcriptome analysis of the Taxol-producing fungus, C. cladosporioides MD2, the genes dbat, bapt and dbtnbt , which encodes 3′-N-debenzoyltaxol N-benzoyltransferase, were not detected in the transcriptome data [41]. It is unclear from Miao and colleagues whether the original sequence for the dbat gene published for C. cladosporioides MD2 in 2009 by their laboratory, is present in the genome, other than to say that no transcript was found [41].…”

“…In the recent transcriptome analysis of the Taxol-producing fungus, C. cladosporioides MD2, the genes dbat, bapt and dbtnbt , which encodes 3′-N-debenzoyltaxol N-benzoyltransferase, were not detected in the transcriptome data [41]. It is unclear from Miao and colleagues whether the original sequence for the dbat gene published for C. cladosporioides MD2 in 2009 by their laboratory, is present in the genome, other than to say that no transcript was found [41]. Moreover, another dbat sequence for the basidiomycete-fungus, Grammothele lineata , published by Das, Rahman, et al, 2017 [42], does not seem to be present in the draft genome of the fungus, published later that year [43].…”

Salicylic acid as an effective elicitor for improved taxol production in endophytic fungus Pestalotiopsis microspora

“…Some endophytic fungi possess taxol biosynthetic genes such as geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate synthase (GGPPS), taxadiene synthase (TXS), 10-deacetylbaccatin III-10-β-O-acetyltransferase (DBAT) and C-13 phenylpropanoid side chain-CoA acetyl transferase (BAPT), known to be present in plants [10]. The fungal taxol biosynthetic genes such as 3-hydroxyl-3-methylglutaryl-CoA (HMG CoA) reductase, taxane 5-alpha hydroxylase (T5αH), taxane 13-alpha-hydroxylase (T13αH) and taxane 2α-O-benzoyltransferase (TBT) were recognized in Cladosporium cladosporioides MD2 by transcriptome analysis [11]. The genes encoding GGPP synthase is of particular interest because it codes for the branch point prenyltransferase, which is involved in the formation of diterpenoid moiety, a precursor for taxol biosynthesis [12].…”