Institute of Biology and Biotechnology of Plants, University Münster, Schlossplatz 8, 48143, Munster, Germany.
Appl Microbiol Biotechnol. 2018 Jan;102(2):615-630. doi: 10.1007/s00253-017-8679-5. Epub 2017 Dec 4.
The fungus Fusarium fujikuroi causes bakanae disease of rice due to its ability to produce the plant hormones, the gibberellins. The fungus is also known for producing harmful mycotoxins (e.g., fusaric acid and fusarins) and pigments (e.g., bikaverin and fusarubins). However, for a long time, most of these well-known products could not be linked to biosynthetic gene clusters. Recent genome sequencing has revealed altogether 47 putative gene clusters. Most of them were orphan clusters for which the encoded natural product(s) were unknown. In this review, we describe the current status of our research on identification and functional characterizations of novel secondary metabolite gene clusters. We present several examples where linking known metabolites to the respective biosynthetic genes has been achieved and describe recent strategies and methods to access new natural products, e.g., by genetic manipulation of pathway-specific or global transcritption factors. In addition, we demonstrate that deletion and over-expression of histone-modifying genes is a powerful tool to activate silent gene clusters and to discover their products.
藤仓镰刀菌由于能够产生植物激素赤霉素而引起水稻恶苗病。该真菌还以产生有害真菌毒素（如棒曲霉素和藤仓镰刀菌素）和色素（如比克替林和藤仓红菌素）而闻名。然而，长期以来，这些广为人知的产物大多无法与生物合成基因簇联系起来。最近的基因组测序揭示了总共 47 个假定的基因簇。其中大多数是孤儿簇，其编码的天然产物尚不清楚。在这篇综述中，我们描述了我们在鉴定和功能表征新型次级代谢产物基因簇方面的最新研究进展。我们介绍了几个将已知代谢物与相应生物合成基因联系起来的例子，并描述了最近获得新天然产物的策略和方法，例如通过对途径特异性或全局转录因子进行遗传操作。此外，我们证明了组蛋白修饰基因的缺失和过表达是激活沉默基因簇并发现其产物的有力工具。
