Arsenal of plant cell wall degrading enzymes reflects host preference among plant pathogenic fungi

Abstract

BackgroundThe discovery and development of novel plant cell wall degrading enzymes is a key step towards more efficient depolymerization of polysaccharides to fermentable sugars for the production of liquid transportation biofuels and other bioproducts. The industrial fungus Trichoderma reesei is known to be highly cellulolytic and is a major industrial microbial source for commercial cellulases, xylanases and other cell wall degrading enzymes. However, enzyme-prospecting research continues to identify opportunities to enhance the activity of T. reesei enzyme preparations by supplementing with enzymatic diversity from other microbes. The goal of this study was to evaluate the enzymatic potential of a broad range of plant pathogenic and non-pathogenic fungi for their ability to degrade plant biomass and isolated polysaccharides.ResultsLarge-scale screening identified a range of hydrolytic activities among 348 unique isolates representing 156 species of plant pathogenic and non-pathogenic fungi. Hierarchical clustering was used to identify groups of species with similar hydrolytic profiles. Among moderately and highly active species, plant pathogenic species were found to be more active than non-pathogens on six of eight substrates tested, with no significant difference seen on the other two substrates. Among the pathogenic fungi, greater hydrolysis was seen when they were tested on biomass and hemicellulose derived from their host plants (commelinoid monocot or dicot). Although T. reesei has a hydrolytic profile that is highly active on cellulose and pretreated biomass, it was less active than some natural isolates of fungi when tested on xylans and untreated biomass.ConclusionsSeveral highly active isolates of plant pathogenic fungi were identified, particularly when tested on xylans and untreated biomass. There were statistically significant preferences for biomass type reflecting the monocot or dicot host preference of the pathogen tested. These highly active fungi are promising targets for identification and characterization of novel cell wall degrading enzymes for industrial applications.

Exploring the Natural Fungal Biodiversity of Tropical and Temperate Forests toward Improvement of Biomass Conversion

“…Variability in biomass conversion suggests that enzymatic pools are different following induction of the secretion of lignocellulose-acting enzymes due to genetic differences among the organisms. This feature was observed by King et al (17) and Russell et al (31). They indicate that after the identification of promising species, there is still significant variation among isolates which may reveal superior candidates.…”

“…Recently, there has also been growing interest in the potential of plant-pathogenic fungi to optimize hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass (12). For instance, large-scale screening of ascomycetes revealed that the plant pathogens were more active than the nonpathogens on several lignocellulosic substrates (17).…”

Lifestyle transitions in plant pathogenic Colletotrichum fungi deciphered by genome and transcriptome analyses

“…Having been compiled from short-read data only, the C. higginsianum assembly is more fragmented than that of C. graminicola, resulting in some genes (5.2%) being split into two or more gene models, whereas others (4%) are truncated versions of the complete gene (Supplementary Note). After correcting for this fragmentation, the estimated gene content of C. higginsianum (15,331) is still markedly larger than that of C. graminicola. The two species share 9,795 orthologous genes.…”

Enhanced glycosyl hydrolase production in Aspergillus nidulans using transcription factor engineering approaches

“…A central challenge in the utilization of this material is its enzymatic conversion into fermentable sugars [3,4]. In this context, saprophytic and phytopathogenic fungi are known to coordinately produce, or to have the capacity to produce, a wide spectrum of lignocellulosic enzymes that can synergistically degrade structural polysaccharides in plant cell walls [5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Filamentous fungi are also attractive expression hosts for recombinant protein production, especially due to their high enzyme secretory capacity [12][13][14].…”