A Special Phenotype of Aconidial SH2 and Its Mechanism of Formation via CRISPRi.

The complex morphological structure of influences its production of proteins, metabolites, etc., making the genetic manipulation and clonal purification of this species increasingly difficult, especially in aconidial . In this study, we found that N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (GlcNAc) could induce the formation of spore-like propagules in the aconidial SH2 strain. The spore-like propagules possessed life activities such as drug resistance, genetic transformation, and germination. Transcriptomic analysis indicated that the spore-like propagules were resting conidia entering dormancy and becoming more tolerant to environmental stresses. The gene and the metabolic pathway of GlcNAc converted to glycolysis are related to the formation of the spore-like propagules, as evidenced by the CRISPRi system, qPCR, and semi-quantitative RT-PCR. Moreover, a method based on the CRISPR-Cas9 tool to rapidly recycle screening tags and recover genes was suitable for SH2. To sum up, this suggests that the spore-like propagules are resting conidia and the mechanism of their formation is the metabolic pathway of GlcNAc converted to glycolysis, particularly the gene. This study can improve our understanding of the critical factors involved in mechanisms of phenotypic change and provides a good model for researching phenotypic change in filamentous fungi.