De Novo Transcriptome Analysis of Plant Pathogenic Fungus Myrothecium roridum and Identification of Genes Associated with Trichothecene Mycotoxin Biosynthesis.

is a plant pathogenic fungus that infects different crops and decreases the yield of economical crops, including soybean, cotton, corn, pepper, and tomato. Until now, the pathogenic mechanism of has remained unclear. Different types of trichothecene mycotoxins were isolated from , and trichothecene was considered as a plant pathogenic factor of . In this study, the transcriptome of in different incubation durations was sequenced using an Illumina Hiseq 2000. A total of 35,485 transcripts and 25,996 unigenes for were obtained from 8.0 Gb clean reads. The protein-protein network of the transcriptome indicated that the mitogen-activated protein kinases signal pathway also played an important role in the pathogenicity of The genes related to trichothecene biosynthesis were annotated. The expression levels of these genes were also predicted and validated through quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. gene encoding trichodiene synthase was cloned and expressed, and the purified trichodiene synthase was able to catalyze farnesyl pyrophosphate into different kinds of sesquiterpenoids. and genes were expressed in , and their corresponding enzymatic properties were characterized. The phylogenetic tree of trichodiene synthase showed a great discrepancy between the trichodiene synthase from and other species. Our study on the genes related to trichothecene biosynthesis establishes a foundation for the hazard prevention, thus improving the yields of economical crops.